Despite the initial fear of missing out, investors realized that they could take their time to mint Runes with no fear of being ‘sniped.’
The fees paid for minting Runes on the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain reached 1,274 BTC, nearing $85 million, according to a dashboard on Dune Analytics by user Cryptokoryo. Meanwhile, Runes-related transactions surpassed the 1,3 million threshold.
On April 20, the first day of Runes available on Bitcoin, users paid 989 BTC to mint their assets through 522,890 transactions. This could relate to the fear of not having their mint transactions going through since other investors can ‘snipe’ minting orders on Bitcoin’s mempool.
Transactions and fees (in BTC) related to Runes minting on Bitcoin. Image: Dune Analytics/Cryptokoryo
Mempool sniping occurs when a user identifies a minting transaction waiting to be inserted into a Bitcoin block and manages to front-run this order by sending the same transaction with a higher fee. As the Runes hype hit the market, some investors were afraid to miss potentially valuable Runes by being sniped, hence the high fees.
Therefore, some of the most ‘expensive’ Bitcoin blocks were registered after the halving. Lugui Tillier, business development director at Brazilian startup Lumx, shared in an April 20 X post that three out of five transactions with the highest fees in Bitcoin history were related to Runes. Moreover, around $1 million in fees were seen in practically every Bitcoin block generated two and a half hours after the halving.
However, investors were quick to realize that there was no need to hurry, with 204 BTC spent on April 21 via 491,462 transactions. At the time of writing, the number of fees for Runes minting registered another slump, with 80 BTC paid on April 22 so far via 306,437 transactions.