With the completion of Bitcoin’s fourth halving, the Runes token protocol has officially gone live. However, the names of the Runes tokens are different from other tokens and often have unusual formats. This article will introduce the design principles behind the names of the Runes tokens. This article is sourced from the book written by Jason Nelson and translated by Jinse Finance, compiled and written by PANews.
(Previous summary:
Bitcoin’s rune trading volume dropped by 99% at its peak, and transaction fees are below $3. Has the market calmed down?
)
(Background supplement:
Character length, incomprehensibility, and soaring fees. What happened after the launch of the Runes protocol?
)
Table of Contents
Why use such long names?
Runes names cannot contain digits
Debate about naming
With the completion of Bitcoin’s halving, along with this milestone, the new RunesToken protocol has officially gone live on the Bitcoin network. According to data from Luminex, the launch platform for Ordinals and Runes, since its launch on April 20th, the Runes protocol has established over 8,000 etchings (the preferred term for RunesToken deployments) on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Among these new digital assets, a trend has quickly emerged, which is the use of long and unconventional names. Browsing this emerging category on platforms like Magic Eden, one can see tokens labeled as “SYMPATHETIC・PARAMUTUALISM” and “WANKO・MANKO・RUNES.”
The names of Runes tokens are usually displayed in all capital letters, which may seem strange, but the creators have good reasons for it. The Runes protocol has a built-in minimum name length to prevent what is known as name squatting. Name squatting, domain squatting, or network squatting involves registering a name that is usually recognized by others as a brand or trademark in order to profit from its recognized value.
However, the creators of Runes do not see this as a problem.
Why use such long names?
Brian Laughlan, co-founder of OrdinalsBot, said:
However, this restriction did not prevent someone from creating a rune named “THE・NEW・YORK・TIMES,” even though it has no apparent connection with The New York Times.
According to the Ordinal Theory Handbook, the names of runes must be between 1 and 28 characters. Despite the current length limitation of using only letters A to Z, the names must be unique regardless of spaces. This means that names like “UNCOMMON・GOODS” and “UNCOMMONGOODS” are considered the same. Additionally, even with different spacing, runes cannot use the same letter sequence as existing runes.
In an episode of the Hell Money Podcast, Casey Rodarmor, the developer of Bitcoin Ordinal, explained:
Runes names cannot contain digits
He explained:
Rodarmor gave an example:
Debate about naming
Rodarmor recalled:
In this setting, Rodarmor explained:
When asked if popular names and brands can be used as rune names, Rodarmor is not concerned.
He said:
He further pointed out:
The file also explains:
The Runes protocol was announced by Rodarmor in September as a way to enable the interchangeability of blockchain tokens that rank high in market value. He noted that Runes aims to address several issues brought by the BRC-20 Token standard last year, such as wasted block space.
Although some non-professional observers may think that Runes and BRC-20 Tokens are the same, Ken Liao, CEO of Bitcoin wallet Xverse, said that over time, the differences between them will become more apparent.
Liao told Decrypt:
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