Crypto News
Runes: An Attempt At A Serious Protocol, Or Another Children’s Toy?

Casey Rodamor, the creator of the Ordinals protocol and reference implementation, recently dropped a proposal for a replacement to the BRC-20 fungible token protocol: Runes. It took roughly seven hours before basic implementations were live and people were minting tokens. They didn’t draw from a specification, or a concrete design, just a rough blog post vaguely describing the concept.
The only concrete part of the protocol idea specified was how to handle token movement and allocations. It is a very simple proposal using OP_RETURN in each transaction to facilitate assigning tokens to a specific UTXO with an output index, a token amount field, and a token ID number. That’s it. A special message is used to issue a token initially, assigning all the balance in the issuance transaction, but that is essentially the entirety of the proposal so far.
So why did Casey create this proposal for Runes? Because the pre-existing BRC-20 protocol is an absolute mess. BRC-20 was designed specifically to use Inscriptions; why? Literally for no good reason. Just because Ordinals and Inscriptions were “the hot new thing” and no rational or logical engineering reason at all. They’re incredibly inefficient as well.
Every operation done with a BRC-20, issuing a token, transferring a token, setting up a smart contract to use them, all of these things require multiple transactions by the simple virtue of using Inscriptions as the mechanism to encode token data on-chain. Inscriptions actually require a “staging transaction” to set up the one that actually puts the inscription data on-chain in the witness. This is because the data actually has to be committed to the UTXO script being spent during the actual transcribing transaction.
So put another way: it’s pointlessly efficient for literally no reason. Counterparty (XCP), OmniLayer(OMNI), and now Runes (??) can all accomplish the same issuance and transfer of arbitrary tokens minted on the Bitcoin blockchain in a single transaction each, not two. So why was BRC-20 created? Why did people jump to use it? Nothing but social hype and the desire to try and make money. It’s analogous to people making a car with hexagonal wheels instead of circular. There is no reason behind it at all except mindless social hype.
But wait, there’s another technical problem BRC-20s are affected by, and also in some ways contribute to: Inscription numbering! BRC-20s essentially have to point backwards to prior inscriptions in order to make a coherent transaction history that can be validated. As Charlie Spears from Luxor recently wrote about, there is a large debate going on in the Ordinals community about how to handle some errors in the ord reference client and other implementations that lead to certain inscriptions not being properly indexed by the client when they were made. This makes BRC-20 tokens a huge complication in considering how to address these indexing errors going forward from a development standpoint. The irony here? From the very beginning users were warned that the Inscription numbering scheme would not be something guaranteed to be stable long-term, and they should not build things depending on it doing so. They ignored that and did it anyway.
There are numerous reasons to do away with the current ordering scheme for Inscriptions that all boil down to removing mandated manual interventions into the protocol. The thinking prior to the proposal to remove the current numbering scheme entirely was to have periodic “blessing” ceremonies where cursed Inscriptions not indexed by the prior numbering scheme would be manually “blessed” and appended to the end of the numbering system. This would require and necessitate manually forking the ord implementations and doing something akin to Ethereum’s intervention after the DAO hack: manually changing the state of things according to the protocol. So, in lieu of a perpetual need to manually intervene and account for currently unknown bugs that would create more cursed Inscriptions, Casey is proposing just doing away with the current numbering scheme entirely. Most of the counter argument to this is around people who own Ordinals not wanting the number of their inscriptions to change, for everything from certain numbers being “rare” to the number of their inscriptions having personal value to them.
These are not Earth-shattering ecosystem breaking implications if the proposal were to go through, however the effect it would have on BRC-20 tokens is. The entire scheme would have to deviate from the rest of the Ordinal ecosystem and continue maintaining the legacy numbering scheme for the purposes of BRC-20 tokens.
Runes completely sidesteps the on-chain inefficiency and need to reconcile the token scheme with the current Inscription numbering debate going on in the ecosystem right now. Here’s the problem though: people are rushing ahead to implement things based on a vague idea with no long term thought or design process going into the protocol first.
They are repeating the same mistakes that lead to the current mess being debated in the Ordinals ecosystem right now around numbering: rushing ahead to build things with no consideration for long term consequences. Ordinals, and Runes, face the same inevitable issues that Bitcoin itself is going to have to face: the scalability limitations of blockchains. Inevitably everything that does not transfer large enough pieces of value per transaction is going to have to find some way to go off-chain, or it will not be a viable use case long term. That’s just the economic reality.
However, schemes like Ordinals and Runes do not have the same limitations and lack of flexibility that Bitcoin itself does in trying to lift activity off-chain. You can see this looking back at the birth of Lightning, Bitcoin itself actually needed to change in order to support new functionality at the base layer in order to be able to safely implement Lightning and take transaction volume off-chain. Bitcoin does not need to change to accomplish the same thing for Ordinals, Runes, or any other arbitrary token protocol on top of Bitcoin.
Runes and these meta-protocols are literally just arbitrary data that means nothing to Bitcoin that people opt into interpreting against imaginary rules to see whether they are valid or not. Nothing can stop people from putting data that violates these rules on-chain, but nothing can make the people who use these protocols acknowledge or respect that valid data. Do you want to implement Solidity for Runes tokens? You can. Do you want to implement a Zero Knowledge Proof scheme so you can build ZK Rollups for Runes tokens? You can.
All doing any of that requires is putting different arbitrary data in the blockchain, and nothing can stop you from doing that. You just need people using these tokens to choose to interpret that arbitrary data against the right arbitrary rule sets. Runes, Ordinals, all these other schemes can actually scale off-chain much easier and much faster than Bitcoin itself can because of this dynamic.
You have the choice right now to either plan for the future from the beginning in how this is all implemented, or just do it live and disregard the consequences again.
So, the question is what will it be? Short-term hacking things together with no long term design or thought behind it just to pump bags to dump on other people, or does anyone in the Ordinals space actually care about designing and implementing infrastructure and tools that can be sustainable and scalable in the long term?
Is Casey the only adult among you?
Casey Rodarmor, the creator of Ordinals, recently released a proposal for the Runes protocol. Will this actually lead to sustainable protocol development, or will the frogs make a mess again?
Crypto News
BitVM Just Got A Massive Upgrade

The introduction of BitVM smart contracts has marked a significant milestone in the path for scalability and programmability of Bitcoin. Rooted in the original BitVM protocol, Bitlayer’s Finality Bridge introduces the first version of the protocol live on testnet, which is a good starting point for realizing the promises of the Bitcoin Renaissance or “Season 2”.
Unlike earlier BTC bridges that often required reliance on centralized entities or questionable trust assumptions, the Finality Bridge leverages a blend of BitVM smart contracts, fraud proofs, and zero-knowledge proofs. This combination not only enhances security but also significantly reduces the need for trust in third parties. We’re not at the trustless level that Lightning provides, but this is a million times better than current sidechains designs claiming to be Bitcoin Layers 2s (in addition to significantly increasing the design space for Bitcoin applications).
The system operates on a principle where funds are securely locked in addresses governed by a BitVM smart contract, functioning under the premise that at least one participant in the system will act honestly. This setup inherently reduces the trust requirements but has to introduce additional complexities that Bitlayer aims to manage with this version of the bridge.
The Mechanics of Trust
In practical terms, when Bitcoin is locked into the BitVM smart contract through the Finality Bridge, users are issued YBTC – a token that maintains a strict 1:1 peg with Bitcoin. This peg is not just a promise but is enforced by the underlying smart contract logic, ensuring that each YBTC represents a real, locked Bitcoin on the main chain (no fake “restacked” BTC metrics). This mechanism allows users to participate in DeFi activities like lending, borrowing, and yield farming within the Bitlayer ecosystem without compromising on the security and settlement assurances that Bitcoin provides.
While some in the community might find these activities objectionable, this type of architecture allows users to get some guarantees that they previously could not hope to get with traditional sidechain designs, with the added bonus that we do not need to “change” Bitcoin to make it happen (although covenants would make this bridge design completely “trust-minimized, which would effectively make it a “True” Bitcoin Layer 2). For more details about the different levels of risks associated with sidechains designs, take a look at Bitcoin Layers assessment of Bitlayer here.
However, until such advancements come to fruition, the Bitlayer Finality Bridge serves as the best realization of the BitVM 2 paradigm. It’s a testament to what’s possible after the dev “brain drain” from centralized chains back to Bitcoin. Despite all the challenges that BitVM chains will face, I remain exceptionally excited at the prospect of Bitcoin fulfilling its destiny as the Ultimate Settlement Chain for all economic activity.
This article is a Take. Opinions expressed are entirely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
Guillaume’s articles in particular may discuss topics or companies that are part of his firm’s investment portfolio (UTXO Management). The views expressed are solely his own and do not represent the opinions of his employer or its affiliates. He’s receiving no financial compensation for these Takes. Readers should not consider this content as financial advice or an endorsement of any particular company or investment. Always do your own research before making financial decisions.
The BitLayer Finality Bridge is Delivering On The Promises of BitVM – While still far from a fully trustless system, the progress made over the past year is remarkable
Crypto News
Bitcoin Banks: We Should Build Them Ourselves

Bitcoin banks are going to happen. We already have a few of them. We’re going to have more of them. Existing legacy banks are going to start offering services. New banks are going to be founded around Bitcoin. This is completely unavoidable at this point. Bitcoin doesn’t scale. Even absent that, people value other services that inherently require other parties. Debt being the chief one.
This is an inescapable reality.
Even if we could snap our fingers and roll out every well specified opcode and covenant proposal at once, it would still take a lot of time to begin building out self-custodial layers that could compete with something like credit unions and banks offering bitcoin accounts at scale. That is not a problem that can be trivially solved overnight.
So what can we do? We need to embrace a localist attitude around making interaction with your bitcoin easy. This requires a two pronged approach, one involving technical development and the other involving, I hate to say it, lobbying.
There already exist pieces of software like LNDHub or LNBits that allow people to offer custodial accounts for Lightning. We need a lot more software like this, and we need it to be miles better. It needs to not involve tinkering around on the command line and hooking up independent software, or perusing Github to follow manual installation instructions, or fumbling around trying to fix dependencies mismatches.
It needs to just work.
Click, sync to the network, done. It needs to be something that power users who are still not very tech savvy can run safely, and not lose other people’s money. It needs to support more than basic accounts for Lightning. Ecash offers privacy, which would be something important when it comes to small groups of people who know each other. You don’t want your friend seeing what you spend your money on. It needs to support things like Unchained or Nunchuck style on-chain self custody. People aren’t going to want to hold all their friends and family’s life savings, but holding a recovery key to safeguard them from their own mistakes is another matter.
We need the software that will actually scale this type of user interaction beyond a bunch of activist nerds online.
We also need a regulatory carve out. There needs to be a clear acknowledgement that running this type of software for friends and family with trivial amounts of money, say thousands of dollars, and without charging anything for it, is an unregulated activity. Helping friends and family interact with Bitcoin safely and easily, and for free, does not make you a bank. The idea of a few thousand dollars needing to comply with the regulations banks managing billions of dollars do is frankly absurd.
This is the path forward given the current constraints of Bitcoin, and the reality of growing and accelerating adoption, that leads us away from a system that eventually becomes completely captured and neutered by legacy financial institutions.
Instead of depending on them to deal with the current scaling limitations of Bitcoin, we depend on each other.
This article is a Take. Opinions expressed are entirely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
Bitcoiners shouldn’t sit around and wait for fiat banks and financial companies to offer services built on Bitcoin, we should do it ourselves.
Crypto News
Galoy Launches Bitcoin-Backed Loan Software, Sets Groundwork For Open-Source Banking

Founder: Nicolas Burtey
Date Founded: September 2019
Location of Headquarters: United States
Number of Employees: 11
Website: https://www.galoy.io/
Public or Private? Private
Last week, Galoy launched Lana, software that enables banks to accept bitcoin as collateral for loans.
Lana helps community and challenger banks (the banks with which Galoy is looking to work) to offer bitcoin-backed loans to various types of customers.
“Some banks might want to use it to sell to retail, and some might want to use it to sell commercial customers or high-net-worth individuals,” Burtey told Bitcoin Magazine.
In offering such loans to a wide array of customers, Burtey believes that the high cost of borrowing currently associated with such products will come down.
“Today’s interest rates are 12% to 15% if you want to get a loan using your bitcoin as collateral,” said Burtey.
“The rates are high because there are so few financial institutions offering this type of product. We see an opportunity now that the regulations are allowing banks to do things with bitcoin,” he added.
“We think a lot of banks will want to enter this market.”
If Burtey is correct in his prediction that banks are keen to offer bitcoin-backed loans, this will not only lower rates for such loans, but it will also introduce open-source Bitcoin software into the world of banking, which could initiate a new trend in the industry.
But more on that in just a minute. First, some background on Galoy.
Galoy’s History: From Blink Wallet To Lana
Founded in September 2019, Galoy had intentions to enable banks to use bitcoin from the start, but it had to hold off on doing so due to an unfriendly regulatory environment.
So, instead, it focused its efforts on creating and supporting Blink wallet (which was originally called the Bitcoin Beach wallet and which Galoy recently sold), a custodial Bitcoin and Lightning wallet predominantly used at first in El Salvador and then in Bitcoin circular economies globally.
“Galoy’s mission was to onboard banks to Bitcoin five years ago,” said Burtey.
“But the regulatory environment was so bad during the last five years that we decided to create Blink. The reason we are now focusing on our original mission is because with the end of Choke Point 2.0 and the repeal of SAB 121, we think now is the perfect time to help banks adopt Bitcoin.”
Burtey spoke about his work in creating and growing Blink fondly and shared that he had to stop working on the project only because it would be too difficult to continue managing it while also aiming to serve a new type of clientele.
“Blink is a B2C (Business-To-Customer) play, and it’s hard as an early-stage startup to focus on too many things,” explained Burtey.
“Galoy is a B2B (Business-To-Business)-driven business, and we want to work with banks and financial institutions,” he added.
“It’s good to be focused on just one thing.”
And, as mentioned, that one thing will now be Lana.
How Lana Works
Lana is software that Galoy helps banks integrate and manage for a subscription fee. With this software, banks can issue bitcoin-backed loans under the terms they create.
“We’re not the ones deciding how much interest will be charged or anything like that,” explained Burtey.
“We give banks the platform to do this, and then they can figure out their cost of capital, the duration of the loan, the liquidation price for the bitcoin in the loan and the rate at which they want to lend,” he added.
“We’re giving you software, and helping you run and automate that software.”
Something else that Galoy doesn’t do for banks is custody the bitcoin provided as collateral for the loans they issue. Each of the banks with whom the company works is responsible for selecting their own custodian.
“You can go to BitGo or Fireblocks or each loan can have its own multisig,” said Burtey. “We’re agnostic on custody.”
With that said, Lana helps banks monitor the bitcoin in custody so that banks can be aware of whether or not collateral is nearing liquidation levels.
“A key piece of this product is risk management,” said Burtey.
“Bitcoin is volatile, and the bank will need a tool to show that it’s taking calculated risk. So, we’ll provide banks with a dashboard to monitor this risk,” he added.
Who Will Use Lana?
Galoy is targeting community banks and other smaller financial institutions with this new product mostly because they think these smaller players will benefit most from it — and because the big banks likely won’t need such a product.
“We don’t think JP Morgan will really want to work with us,” said Burtey. “They’re probably building something like this themselves, whereas a smaller bank, a credit union or small company probably isn’t.”
Burtey also understands that smaller lenders’ incorporating Lana as opposed to building something comparable themselves can save these financial institutions a significant amount of time and effort.
“Our goal is to say, ‘Look, you can develop this internally, and it will take you six months, a year or longer depending on how much you know about Bitcoin,’” said Burtey. “‘Or we have a lending product as a service for you, and you can launch it much more quickly.’”
And as Burtey and his team onboard their first round of smaller banks, they’ll not only be making history in enabling more banks to accept bitcoin as collateral for loans, but they’ll potentially be altering the trajectory of banking in general by introducing open-source software to it.
Open-Source Bitcoin Banking
Burtey’s long-term vision for Galoy is to do much more than just help banks issue bitcoin-backed loans. He’s looking to introduce open-source software into banking as more banks begin to embrace Bitcoin.
However, it’s important to note that Lana isn’t open-source just yet. It’s fair-source software, and, under such a license, code becomes open-source after two years.
“It’s a delayed open-source system, but it’s all available on GitHub,” said Burtey. “You can go and try it, test it, and play with it on your own.
Under the fair-source license, no company other than Galoy can sell the product to a bank right now, allowing Galoy to profit while still building with auditable code.
“We sell the deployment, and we help banks to plug in to their custodian,” explained Burtey. “We’re building in the open — but we also want to generate revenue.”
Beyond helping banks implement Lana, Burtey’s wants to develop open-source “core banking software,” as he’s looking to disrupt the “core ledger” oligopoly.
“The core ledger is where banks store the account data, customer information and transaction details,” said Burtey. “It’s the source of truth for banks.”
And only three companies — FIS, Fiserv and Jack Henry — have the core ledger market cornered.
“These are all like hundred billion dollar companies that you’ve probably never heard about because all they do is focus on selling software to banks,” said Burtey.
“Our long-term goal is to disrupt this industry by making something that is open source,” said Burtey. “Today, there is no company that does core banking with the idea of open source, and so we’re working towards this.”
Burtey envisions a world in which open-source software can make it much easier for someone to start a Bitcoin bank. (For those who wince at the words “Bitcoin” and “bank” being used in tandem, might I remind you that it was the legendary Hal Finney himself who wrote that bitcoin-backed banks would serve as a scaling solution.)
“To start a bank today is a very expensive and complicated process,” said Burtey. “You have to pay $100,000 plus just to purchase the core ledger technology.”
Burtey then referenced his own experience in starting Blink wallet, essentially a bitcoin bank run on open-source code, before continuing.
“I just went to El Salvador and started what was effectively my own bank because I wanted to,” said Burtey.
“We need to reinvent how core banking software is being made in the world of Bitcoin, and I think this is where open-source becomes relevant,” he added.
“This is really why I think the world of banking and Bitcoin will be very different from the world of banking with fiat, and I think we’re one of the companies at the forefront of this.”
Galoy founder and CEO Nicolas Burtey wants to help more borrowers use bitcoin as collateral for loans while introducing open-source software into the traditional banking stack.
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