Recently, besides the booming “shiba inu donations” in the SOL ecosystem, there’s also a highly buzzworthy project in the BTC ecosystem, which has led to a revival of the entire BTC NFT sector. This project is the community-acknowledged leader of the rune segment—Runestone. On March 15, Runestone was launched with a floor price of only 0.012 BTC (about 1000 USDT). Over the past few days, the floor price has skyrocketed to a high of 0.047 BTC (about 3400 USDT), and Runestone’s market value has at one point surpassed Pudgy Penguins, with the community’s morale so high that there are bold statements about “surpassing BAYC.”

What exactly is Runestone, and why has it become so popular?

More Fair Initial Distribution

The initiator of Runestone is a developer of the Ordinals protocol, Leonidas, naturally bringing attention to the project. According to the introduction, Runestone is an open-source, transparent, spontaneous, and decentralized protocol aimed at rewarding those who participated in the Ordinals protocol in its first year. To distribute Runestone more fairly, Leonidas chose a snapshot based on the wallet activity on the BTC blockchain before block height 826,600, which coincidentally is a year after the release of Ordinals. Runestone has several characteristics:

• Fairness: No team allocation, organized by a group of volunteers;

• Large Total Supply: 112,383 addresses received a chance for a free airdrop;

• Narratives: Mined the two largest blocks in Bitcoin’s history.

Runestone is not only popular in the Western community but also has many hardcore players in the Chinese NFT circles participating. In a Space yesterday afternoon, many BAYC holders could be seen changing their avatars to “runestones” as shown.

Runestone Chinese District Space

In this Space dedicated to the Chinese community, Leonidas shared his core views on Runestone, highlighting several key points:

• BTC is seen as the future, particularly with Layer 2 (L2) and the Runes protocol. Runestone is expected to lead in the adoption of the Runes protocol.
• Runestone should not be viewed merely as an NFT. Instead, its future development should lean towards becoming a meme coin, noting its current market value is still quite low.
• Future token issuance will be exclusive to Runestone holders, with no plans for sales through other means.

OTC trading was booming before going online

Before its official launch, pre-market trading for Runestone was vibrant. Despite the large total amount of Runestone airdropped, the market was already active with acquisitions before Leonidas officially distributed the airdrop. According to data from the Whales Market platform’s Pre-Market section, Runestone’s pre-listing peak transaction price exceeded $1,700, with a total transaction volume close to $4 million. Calculated based on the average price of $1,500 in the last two days before its secondary market debut, its pre-launch market value reached a staggering $168 million, indicating significant interest.

Image source:Whales Market

On the morning of March 15th, Leonidas announced on platform X that the Runestone airdrop had begun, with everyone expected to receive their share within the next 24 hours. Following this, discussions about Runestone in the community increased, alongside a continued rise in popularity.

After the airdrop, the price of Runestone was briefly dropped to around 0.012 BTC. However, strong and sustained buying pressure soon emerged, pushing the floor price up steadily to above 0.047 BTC, with the price currently falling back to around 0.038 BTC. The total transaction volume approached 660 BTC.

Image source:Magic Eden

During this period of intense buying activity, the concentration of holdings began to increase, and the number of holding addresses decreased from over 110,000 initially to less than 86,000. According to data from OKX, there are currently 16 addresses holding more than 101 Runestones, 31 addresses holding between 51 and 100 Runestones, 364 addresses holding between 11 and 50 Runestones, 5210 addresses holding between 2 and 10 Runestones, and 80890 addresses holding just 1 Runestone.

Image source:OK

The Next “Golden Shovel” in the BTC Ecosystem

As the popularity of Runestone skyrockets, project teams within the BTC ecosystem are also drawn to it, bringing with them the “benefits” for holders. As a member of the community put it: “Owning Runestone feels like DeFi harvesting, where you only collect without any risks.”

The first “harvesting” began. At 5:30 AM on March 19th, the CEO of the popular BTC blockchain NFT project Pizza Ninjas, trevor.btc, announced on the X platform the launch of the Free Open Edition Mint project THE PROPHECY. All users who had not listed their Runestone, Pizza Ninjas, or Wizards of Ord at the time of the snapshot could mint for free, from 5:30 AM on March 19th to 5:30 AM on March 20th. So far, THE PROPHECY has minted over 35,000 items.

Mint website

In the secondary market, the floor price of THE PROPHECY surged to around 0.002 BTC (approximately $130) before falling back to a current floor price of 0.00096 BTC (approximately $60). With BTC fees around 30, the cost of minting is roughly $14, offering a decent return on investment when sold in the secondary market.

Image source:Magic Eden

Currently, besides THE PROPHECY, which is still in the minting phase, several other projects are planning to distribute “benefits” to Runestone holders. According to feedback from several community members compiled by Odaily Planet Daily (Note: As these have not been officially recognized by Runestone, users should be cautious of risks):

• Runeshield: Aiming to create the second biggest Meme on the blockchain, driven by Runes, in tribute to Runestone, rewarding Runestone holders. This project is currently discussing minting costs and has not started minting yet;
• Ordinals Bricks: All Runestone holders will have the right to mint one for free. This has not started yet;
• Project teams on the Merlin blockchain have also announced plans to provide bridges, DEXs, indexers, minting services, and more incentives for Runestone and the Runes protocol.

If the floor price of THE PROPHECY, the first to distribute “benefits” to Runestone holders, continues to rise, it is believed that more and more projects in the BTC ecosystem will prioritize this group of “Runestone holders” addresses.

Summary

After the complete distribution of the Runestone airdrop, Leonidas initiated a poll on the X platform to inquire about the total amount of Meme tokens to be distributed through Runestone. The poll saw over 10,000 participants, with the most supported token amount being 21,000,000.

It is evident that owning Runestone represents a definite airdrop, which is the soon-to-be-distributed Meme tokens, along with the support from the Merlin blockchain and other projects to boost Runestone’s development. Perhaps, the potential earnings from holding a “Runestone” could exceed its secondary market price.

Disclaimer：

1. This article is reprinted from [odaily](https://www.odaily.news/post/5193896].All copyrights belong to the original author [Asher]*. If there are objections to this reprint, please contact the Gate Learn team, and they will handle it promptly.
2. Liability Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not constitute any investment advice.
3. Translations of the article into other languages are done by the Gate Learn team. Unless mentioned, copying, distributing, or plagiarizing the translated articles is prohibited.