Runestone Project to Conduct Bitcoin Airdrop

The developers behind the Bitcoin “inscriptions” project, Runestone, have announced a distribution of native tokens on the network of the first cryptocurrency. The criteria for the airdrop were detailed by the protocol’s founder, known by the pseudonym Leonidas, in an interview with Decrypt. 

Addresses eligible for the coins must contain at least three “inscriptions,” excluding those starting with “text/plain” or “application/json.”

Eligibility for the distribution can be checked using a tool provided by the OKX exchange.

Shout out to @okx for creating a tool to check if your Ordinals address will receive the Runestone airdrop!

ARE YOU READY TO GET STONED?

→ https://t.co/DO0vMfGhF8 pic.twitter.com/ZQaetPEFIb

— Leonidas (@LeonidasNFT) February 26, 2024

According to the conditions, a Runestone-eligible address must contain inscriptions in blocks up to height 826,600.

A total of 112,383 wallets have already qualified for the airdrop. Leonidas stated that each will receive one “runestone.”

“This is a decentralized and 100% voluntary effort — last month I proposed the idea of a large-scale distribution to reward the pioneers of the Ordinals community. There is no team allocation, no organization behind it, no utility, and no roadmap,” he declared. 

The developer noted that more than ten different companies within the “inscriptions” ecosystem have donated funds and technical resources for the airdrop’s implementation. 

According to Whales Market, the minimum price for Runestone on the pre-market is $545. 

Leonidas emphasized that the project’s name links it to the fungible token standard — Runes, proposed by the Ordinals protocol author Casey Rodarmor.

Runestone is part of this ecosystem but is not yet a token, the developer noted. The launch of the main network and the coin is planned post-halving.  

“Runestone is a precursor to Runes, where the ‘inscription’ received during the distribution will convert into a protocol token after its launch in eight weeks,” Leonidas explained. 

Previously, Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr stated that the Ordinals protocol contributes to spam in the network and predicted its imminent demise. 

Later, Bitcoin “inscriptions” were added to the U.S. National Vulnerability Database.

In December 2023, user OG General purchased one of the early NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain from the Honey Badger collection for 10.4 BTC (approximately $450,000 at the time of the transaction).