Three weeks have passed since the highly anticipated launch of Runes, a novel protocol on the Bitcoin blockchain. The launch, which coincided with Bitcoin's latest halving event, generated immense excitement and record fees for Bitcoin miners. In its first week, Runes amassed an impressive $135 million in Bitcoin transaction fees. However, since then, activity has slowed significantly.

According to a Dune analytics dashboard, May 10th saw the lowest levels of activity on the Runes protocol, with the fewest new mints and new wallets interacting with the protocol since its launch.

Moreover, data from The Block reveals a steady decline in fees generated by the protocol. While Runes still generates hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees daily, the sum has only exceeded $1 million twice in the past twelve days.

Despite this decline, Runes remains far from obscurity. Several Rune collections boast market capitalizations in the hundreds of millions of dollars, according to Magic Eden data. Additionally, Runes developer Casey Rodarmor, also the creator of Bitcoin Ordinals, recently teased an innovative audio-reactive generative art project.

Runes, like Ordinals, enables different token standards on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, offering a more efficient Bitcoin tokenization solution than the BRC20 standard. This has led to a surge in memecoin trading activity on Bitcoin, which recently processed its one billionth transaction.