Runestone, the largest ordinal inscription by block size, is up for auction, NFT historian Leonidas said Wednesday. According to Leonidas, the current highest bid for Runestone inscription 63,140,674 is 0.26 BTC, which is approximately $17,261.61 on the Ord City market.
Leonidas said all proceeds from this auction will cover Bitcoin network fees associated with the Runestone airdrop and go to Bitcoin miners.
“There are no team assignments, pre-sales, etc., and the open source eligibility algorithm is designed to not favor whales,” Leonidas said. “Runestone is a non-utility project, and Runestone and the signature inscriptions that point to it are collectible works of art intended to emerge when no one else did and to be worn as a badge of honor for those who believed in the Ordinal Protocol. .”
The runestone auction will run until noon on March 8, 2024.
The highly anticipated Runestone airdrop was first announced in February. On Monday, the runestone ordinal number was inscribed on the Bitcoin blockchain. The 3.97MB project took up two full blocks on the network.
“This is one of seven Ordinal inscriptions larger than 400,000 bytes (400KB) and was created in collaboration with OrdinalsBot and Marathon Digital Holdings, which mined block 832,947,” he said. “It set a record as the largest block in Bitcoin history (3,991,547 bytes/3.991MB).”
Leonidas did not disclose the event date, but in the upcoming Runestone airdrop, more than 112,000 eligible Bitcoin addresses will receive the Runestone ordinal inscription.
When the Rune Protocol is applied to Bitcoin after the halving, Leonidas said: decryptionRunestone tokens are airdropped to runestone holders in proportion to the number of runestone inscriptions they have.
“The latter airdrop could be quite expensive as the main variable is that Bitcoin network fees are expected to surge after the halving. Some are demanding ongoing fees exceeding 1,000 sats/vB,” Leonidas said..
Leonidas added that the Runes protocol will be activated at Bitcoin L1 block 840,000, when the halving is scheduled to occur around April 20, 2024.
The art for the Runestone inscription was created by artist Léo Caillard, who Leonidas said contributed the image to the Runestone project under a Creative Commons license.
“(The runestone) symbolizes humanity’s ongoing desire to leave a mark that lasts beyond a lifetime and to communicate with future generations,” Leonidas said. “This effort was more than a technical achievement. It is a bridge connecting past, present and future, and a reminder that art in all its forms seeks to capture the ephemeral and make it eternal.”
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.
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