Runes continue to dominate the majority of Bitcoin transactions, although the fees collected by miners from Rune transactions have seen a slight decline since the record-breaking halving day.

Since its launch following the halving event on April 20, Runes, a novel token standard on the Bitcoin blockchain, has accounted for over two-thirds of Bitcoin transactions. According to data from a Dune Analytics dashboard shared by Crypto Koryo, more than 2.38 million Runes transactions have been processed, representing 68% of all Bitcoin transactions since April 20. This figure includes ordinary peer-to-peer Bitcoin transactions, BRC-20s, Ordinals, and Runes.

On its peak day, April 23, Runes saw over 750,000 transactions, but this number declined to 312,000 the following day. Initially, much of the demand at block 840,000 originated from memecoin and nonfungible token enthusiasts seeking to engrave "rare satoshis" using the Runes protocol.

During the halving day, Runes transactions contributed to nearly 70% of miner fees. Since then, the daily percentage has fluctuated between 33% and 69%. However, there is debate within the industry regarding whether Runes will continue to be a sustainable revenue source for Bitcoin miners, especially considering the disparity between the number of Rune transactions and the miner fees earned from them.

The new protocol, developed by Casey Rodarmor, the creator of Ordinals, is positioned as a more efficient method for token creation on the Bitcoin network compared to the BRC-20 token standard.

Despite its popularity, some critics, including Nikita Zhavoronkov, a lead developer at Blockchair, are concerned about the increasing block space consumed by Rune transactions. They argue that Bitcoin's original vision as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, as envisioned by its pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto, is being compromised.