Daily Bitcoin artwork sales have drastically declined by 99% from their peak in April.

The daily count of new Runes etched onto the Bitcoin blockchain has witnessed a significant decline over the past week, dropping below 250 for the past six days. Notably, only 157 Runes were etched on Monday, representing a staggering 99% decrease from the peak recorded in late April. This decline follows a period of remarkable growth, during which an average of 14,700 new Runes were etched daily between April 26 and 30. The pinnacle of this surge was achieved on April 26, with a record-breaking 23,061 Runes etched onto the blockchain.Runes, a new token standard introduced at the fourth Bitcoin halving block on April 20, empowers memecoin and non-fungible token enthusiasts to inscribe their cherished artwork, images, audio, and videos onto the Bitcoin network. Initially, this innovative protocol served as a much-needed revenue source for Bitcoin miners, compensating them for the reduction in block subsidy following the halving.Despite the recent decline in Rune etchings, transactions associated with the protocol continue to dominate a significant portion of Bitcoin transactions in May. These transactions primarily occur on popular marketplaces such as Magic Eden, OKX, Ordinals Wallet, and UniSat.Runes were designed by Ordinals inventor Casey Rodarmor with the intention of utilizing blockspace more efficiently than its primary competitor, BRC-20s. Unlike BRC-20s, Runes leverage Bitcoin’s unspent transaction output (UTXO) model, enabling UTXOs to hold balances of arbitrary fungible tokens like Runes.Last month, Bitcoin core developer Luke Dashjr expressed concerns about the Runes protocol, alleging that it exploits a fundamental design flaw within the Bitcoin blockchain network. He pointed out the differing approaches of Ordinal Inscriptions and Runes in their interaction with the network, suggesting that while Ordinals exploits vulnerabilities, Runes operates within the existing framework of the network’s design flaws. In response to Dashjr’s critique, he proposed methods for filtering out Runes transactions by adjusting the “datacarriersize” setting in the bitcoin.conf file. However, miners have yet to embrace this recommendation. The surge in Runes popularity coincided with Bitcoin transaction fees reaching an all-time high average of $128 on April 20, the date of the fourth Bitcoin halving.