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Bitcoin Runes is a new fungible token protocol on Bitcoin that launched in April 2024, alongside the Bitcoin Halving. Created by Casey Rodarmor, the same creator of Bitcoin Ordinals, Runes are a more efficient design compared to BRC-20 tokens, an experimental protocol for fungible tokens that was built on top of Ordinals.
As of July 23rd, there have been over 86,000 Runes “etched” (created) on Bitcoin, which in turn have generated over 14M transactions and 2,543 BTC in transaction fees. To put those numbers in perspective, look at this chart showing Bitcoin transaction fees and how Runes have taken the majority of Ordinals/BRC-20 market share.
While it’s still early days for all of these metaprotocol standards, there’s clear market traction with Bitcoin Runes, and we are excited to announce the Runes API for any devs looking to work with this emerging fungible token protocol.
Meet the Runes API
Hiro’s Runes API offers on-chain data for Bitcoin Runes in a familiar REST interface and is available today. This API offers comprehensive Runes data across a number of different endpoints, including:
- Metadata for a specific Runes etching
- Runes activity for a specific address, a specific block, and more
- User balances
- And more
Over the past few years, we’ve built a lot of expertise in efficiently indexing the Bitcoin blockchain. We’ve created Chainhook, a customizable, lightweight data indexer for Bitcoin and Stacks. We run and maintain an Ordinals API that handles 100M+ requests per month with 99.9% uptime. We built a custom ordinals indexer called Ordhook. And now we are bringing all of that expertise to Bitcoin Runes.
To get accurate Runes data, we’ve created our own indexer for Bitcoin Runes called Runehook, and this indexer is the backbone of the Runes API. It’s open source, reorg-aware, and efficient, indexing Runes activity in a new Bitcoin block in just a couple seconds.
Watch the Runes API in action below:
Start Building With Runes
We’ve excited to roll out support for Bitcoin Runes and continue to support Bitcoin builders across different Bitcoin layers. Get started with the Runes API in Hiro documentation and let us know what you think in the #ordinals Discord channel under the Hiro developer tools section.
