What Are Runestone Ordinals? A Beginner's Guide

The Runestone project has created a lot of excitement in the Ordinals community in the past few months due to its airdrops and free and fair distribution model. 

Read on to learn more about Runestones and how you can get in on the runes tokens airdrop action. 

What Are Runestones?

Runestones are 112,383 inscriptions created to reward those who adopted Ordinals in year one. They were airdropped in March 2024 in what is reportedly the largest Ordinals airdrop ever, as the activity cost about $96,724 or $0.88 per recipient in transaction fees. 

Runestone #63140674 was sold for 8 BTC (approximately $556,000) in a Dutch auction to cover this expense. It is one of the largest inscriptions due to its 3.967 MB file size. To date, only 18 out of 71.5 million inscriptions over 3MB have been created.

Runestones represent a work of art donated by the sculptor Léo Caillard under a Creative Commons License. This license type permits the free distribution, adaptation, and remix of copyrighted work while retaining the creator’s copyrights. This art features a carved stone etched with a runic symbol, hence the term Runestone. 

The Parent-Child Link in Runestones 

Runestones were created from a parent inscription related to Runestone #63140674, the grandfather inscription. The parent inscription, developed by Taproot Wizards co-creator FAR, was then burned (sent to Satoshi’s address) to prevent the creation of more inscriptions. 

Satoshi’s address can be considered a burn address as its assets may never be spent. Moreover, parent-child relationships in the Ordinals protocol create on-chain provenance (history of ownership) for collections.  

Runestone Airdrops

Runestone is a fair distribution volunteer-led project that allocated free inscriptions to Ordinals wallets holding three or more non-text and non-JSON script inscriptions on or before block 826,200. It’s also a pre-Rune project that promised the allotment of runes tokens before the launch of the Runes protocol in April 2024. 

Shortly after the 48-hour airdrop, which started on March 14, Runestones became the top Ordinals collection and the third-largest NFT collection by market cap in the crypto space. 

In addition to the Ordinals airdrop, the Runestones project also carried out another airdrop in April 2024. This time, the project distributed 100 billion DOG.GO.TO.THE.MOON (DOG) runes tokens to Runestone holders. DOG is currently the top runes token by market cap. 

According to Leonidas, the founder of ord.io and Runestones, the project will hold one more airdrop in 2024 and another when DOG becomes the top memecoin in the crypto market. 

What Is the Runes Protocol?

The Runes protocol is a mechanism for creating and issuing Bitcoin runes (fungible tokens native to the Bitcoin blockchain). It was launched by Casey Rodarmor (who’s also the creator of Ordinals) at the 2024 Bitcoin halving block as an alternative to the BRC-20 token standard, which, by the nature of its design, can clog the Bitcoin network with junk UTXOs. 

The Runes protocol solves BRC-20’s network congestion problem with a UTXO model, similar to Bitcoin’s. This model enables it to prevent the creation of junk UTXOs, achieving better UTXO management and minimizing on-chain footprint.

What is Runestone’s Vision?

The Runestone project wants to demonstrate that free and fair token launches can succeed without implementing common techniques such as pre-sales, issuing 10% of the total token supply to the team, and buy-before-tweeting. 

“For people confused about how we went from $0 to $550,000,000 in 24 days, our free and fair distribution that involved none of these mechanics is the reason,” Leonidas wrote on X. 

The project’s founder reveals that he only received 9 Runestones, which is 0.008% of the total token supply. From this number, he gave Léo Caillard 3 inscriptions and an X user 1 Runestone.  

How to Get Free Runes Airdrops as a Runestones Holder Using Xverse Wallet

While you may have missed Runestone’s first runes airdrop, you could qualify for upcoming ones by buying Runestones. These Ordinal inscriptions are available for sale on marketplaces like Magic Eden. 

Here’s how you can use the Xverse wallet to obtain free runes tokens airdrops as a Runestone owner:

• Download the Xverse Chrome extension wallet. We recommend this wallet version for this transaction.
• Set it up and back up the seed phrase on paper.
• Create a strong password to upgrade your wallet’s security level.
• Fund your wallet with BTC for transaction fees.
• Open Magic Eden on your browser and connect your Xverse wallet.

• Go to the Runestone collection and click on your preferred Runestone inscription in full view.
• Select a transaction fee category (low, standard, or high) and click “Buy Now.”

• Complete the transaction and wait for the inscription to hit your Ordinals wallet. 
• Once you get it, you could be eligible to get runes in upcoming airdrops.

And that’s it! That’s how easy it is to purchase a Runestone to become eligble for further runes tokens airdrops. 

Download Xverse now to securely manage all your Ordinals and runes tokens.