What is the RSIC Metaprotocol? A Guide to RSIC Ordinals & Runes

The RSIC metaprotocol debuted with an Ordinals airdrop that left many lucky people overjoyed at getting free inscriptions. One of the inscriptions, no 56,754,110, had an inscribed text that read, “These runes will be etched in our foundry after the runes protocol launches on Bitcoin.”

Read on to learn about the RSIC Metaprotocol project and how it works.

What is the RSIC Metaprotocol?

The RSIC metaprotocol is a peer-to-peer (P2P) allocation system for a rune token known as RSIC.GENESIS.RUNE (RUNECOIN). 

The protocol airdropped 21,000 inscriptions in January 2024 to over 9,000 wallets of collectors who had been active in the Ordinals' space since the early days. Some of the recipients of the free digital artifacts were holders of top inscriptions like Bitcoin Frogs, Nodemonkes, and Bitcoin Puppets. 

RSIC is short for Rune Specific Inscription Circuit, which is somewhat similar to Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC). ASICs are hardware used to mine BTC, and just like these machines, RSICs are used to “mine” tokens. However, RSICs aren’t machines but Ordinal inscriptions that can generate pre-runes once activated, thereby providing value addition to anyone who holds them on an Ordinals-compatible wallet like Xverse. 

The RSIC project, operated by a pseudonymous person or persons, had distributed all mined runes by April 25, 2024, a few days after the Bitcoin halving event. The project will continue to involve RSIC miners with a second phase whose details are yet to be published. 

How Does RSIC Metaprotocol Work?

For an RSIC to mine its pre-runes allocation, you had to first activate it. The activation procedure entailed transferring the RSIC once to a different wallet or the wallet it was airdropped to. According to the project, only 19,883 out of the 21,000 airdropped inscriptions were activated.

While an activated RSIC earned you 21 runes per block through HODLing, you earned more thanks to RSIC’s gamified mining process. One way you could maximize your rune earnings was through a booster that doubled the runes mined per block. Only one boost was permitted per wallet.

RSIC owners also earned more runes via random hash alignment. This was a mining strategy linked to Bitcoin’s block generation process. If the last digit of the latest Bitcoin block hash value corresponded to the hash value of an RSIC symbol, the owner would earn 336 runes in that block. 

The last method for maximizing rune rewards was the halving raffle, where the project randomly chose 5 addresses holding RSICs to acquire 5%, 4%, 3%, 2%, and 1% of the total diluted rune supply. Every RSIC received a ticket for this lottery as long as the owner did not sell it before the halving event. 

Besides the aforementioned reward options, the RSIC game also included lore comprising of the terms factory and foundry. The purpose of the factory was to produce RSICs, while the foundry’s function was to etch runes, hence the reading on the inscribed text we mentioned earlier

What Are RSIC•GENESIS•RUNE Tokens?

‍RSIC.GENESIS.RUNE tokens are pre-Rune fungible digital assets mined using RSICs. 

They are referred to as pre-Rune tokens, as they were mined before the launch of the Runes protocol in April 2024. Although mining took place before the Runes protocol rollout, the tokens were etched on block 840,000, which also happened to be the Bitcoin halving block and the block where the Rune protocol launch transpired. 

 RSIC.GENESIS.RUNE tokens have a total supply of 21 billion, and their symbol is RSIC. 

What is the RSIC Ordinals Collection?

The RSIC Ordinals collection consists of 21,000 inscriptions (10% of this amount was allocated to game designers) featuring runic symbols enclosed in grids. 

Runic symbols are ancient letters with deep meanings that you may have seen in the Vikings TV series. The symbol at the bottom right-hand corner of the grid dictates how rare an RSIC is. This is also the symbol that turned orange if its hash value aligned with that of the latest Bitcoin block.

Source: Magic Eden

RSICs with extremely rare symbols have fetched high prices on the open market. For instance, such an RSIC sold for 3.25 BTC (almost $140,000) in February 2024. The floor price of RSICs at the time of writing is 0.02 BTC (about $1,300). 

Xverse: Your Gateway to the Runes Token Economy

You can securely store and manage all your Ordinals and Runes tokens using Xverse wallet. 

Xverse is the leading Bitcoin Web3 wallet available on iOS and Android, and as a browser extension on Google Chrome browser, enabling you to manage all your Bitcoin assets seamlessly on mobile and on your desktop. 

‍To secure your Runes tokens and other Bitcoin-native assets, download Xverse now.

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