The History of RSIC
Last updated
Last updated
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RSIC Metaprotocol is a Bitcoin Ordinals collection featuring elements of creative coding, token farming, and unique game mechanics. It is notable for its use of inscriptions as digital miners, described by the RSIC whitepaper as a peer-to-peer rune distribution system. The collection leverages provenance through parent-child relationships that tie each RSIC to inscription #126. The creators refer to the project as a game with the goal of securing a bag of runes. The term 'RSIC' (Rune Specific Inscription Circuit) is presumably inspired by ASIC Bitcoin miners.
The project launched unannounced in January 2024 when twenty-one thousand RSICs were airdropped for free to active members of several Ordinal collections. Players were instructed to transfer their RSIC once to activate the miner (a self-transfer was acceptable).
RSIC miners have a set of 24 rarities based on their rune symbol in the lower right-hand corner of the grid. The significance of RSIC rarity is currently unknown.
Once activated, the mined output was 21 runes per block. The rune symbol in the lower right-hand corner of the RSIC randomly turned orange, indicating a yield of 336 runes for that block. This was a random reward that occurred when the RSIC type code matched the latest block hash. Allocations for runes accrued to wallets, not RSICs. If an RSIC was transferred to a different wallet, the mined rune allocations would remain with the original wallet and not get transferred to the new wallet receiving the RSIC.
Players were later given the option to create a "boost" inscription to earn addition runes while mining.
The airdrop was an immediate success. In February 2024 a rare RSIC sold for 3.25 BTC. RSIC Metaprotocol reached a peak floor price of around 0.115 BTC in March 2024. Since launching, the collection has surpassed 1.6K BTC in secondary volume, placing it among the most popular collections in the Ordinals ecosystem.
Communities that received the airdrop include Node Monkes, Ordinal Maxi Biz, Bitcoin Frogs, Bitcoin Puppets, Pizza Ninjas, and some sub 10K collections, among others. The exact criteria for the distribution is unknown, but there was likely an element of randomness involved.
The game designers reserved 10% of the RSIC supply and participated in rune mining.
Although there is speculation as to the creators' identities, the team remains anonymous. Major updates to the project are published on-chain. The RSIC dev, known as runesdev, occasionally posts supplemental information on X.com.
Throughout the mining process (between Jan 2024-April 2024), pre-rune allocations could be tracked on ordiscan.com. A dashboard with a leaderboard for rune mining was also made available on the Runecoin website (runecoin.io).
In addition to mining, the game designers included a rune-lottery at the halvening. Each RSIC received one lottery ticket for every consecutive block it was held until block 840,000. If a player transferred or sold their RSIC, all lottery tickets for that miner would revert to zero. The raffle offered five separate prize allocations of the total rune supply (5%, 4%, 3%, 2%, and 1%).
Inspired by the game designers' references to Voltaire, a community known as the 'Runes Collective' spear-headed a ticket-pooling effort to increase their odds of winning.
The Runecoin team facilitated the pooling effort, and the Runes Collective community won 4 out of the 5 possible allocations. Within each prize pool, the holder of the winning RSIC received 10% of the allocation. The other 90% was distributed to all pooled RSICs. The Runecoin team published the lottery algorithm on-chain.
The single winner of the 2% prize won 420 million $Runecoin. This lucky account held one RSIC.
In April 2024, $Runecoin became the first token to launch on Memeland's Stakeland platform. The Runecoin team allocated 2% of their own supply to Stakeland to educate and onboard new users to the Runes ecosystem. Users on Stakeland were given tasks to post on X.com in order to earn steaks. A percentage of the steaks could later be burned for $Runecoin.
The mined RSIC rune at the halvening was revealed to be Rune #8 (RSIC•GENESIS•RUNE), also known by the ticker $Runecoin. The number eight was deliberately chosen because it's considered a lucky number in Asian culture. The $Runecoin supply is limited to 21 billion tokens. Impressively, the postage on the etch transaction was 888 sats.
The Runecoin team flawlessly airdropped Rune #8 to the community. Runecoin became the first project to airdrop a pre-mined rune allocation, despite the high-fee environment at the time. They also assisted other projects in airdropping runes to their respective communities.
In April 2024, $Runecoin was listed on OKX, becoming the first rune to be listed on a leading exchange.
The airdrop of RSIC•GENESIS•RUNE marked the end of RSIC Season One. The Runecoin team has confirmed that RSIC digital miners will have a second season, although no further details have been released. Rune #21 (RSIC•SEASON•TWO) was etched and premined by the Runecoin team at the halvening, but it is unclear if this particular token is being mined in Season Two. In May 2024 the Runecoin team acquired runecoin.com.
RSIC Metaprotocol influenced the Ordinals airdrop meta of 2024 and inspired the launch of many other pre-runes projects. The Runecoin team has successfully delivered on two airdrops (RSIC inscriptions and Rune #8), helping to onboard thousands of people into the ecosystem and grow the community. These airdrops are estimated to have cost the Runecoin team a double-digit amount of bitcoin out-of-pocket. Based on the their track record and technical achievements, the project is poised to continue innovating in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
The runes ecosystem has taken a beating, but we believe it will prove to be successful.
What is the critical thing?
Liquidity.
Everything is downstream of liquidity.
It sounds simple.
But the simple thing is hard.
Runecoin started as an experiment. We have always had the ethos that the space must win, not just a single project, including this one.
In keeping with that, we will continue to experiment, with the overarching objective of attracting interest and liquidity to the runes ecosystem.
We have ideas for how to achieve this.
But let us be clear. Runecoin does not need us to succeed. The catalyst could be unpredictable, or come from someone or something else.
If it does, we will applaud it.
Now let’s talk about the bull case: our thesis is that Runecoin could become the second most valuable cryptocurrency after Bitcoin.
That is an extreme bull case.
The bear case is zero.
Where will the chips fall?
Let’s play the game and find out. - Runecoin, x.com https://x.com/rune_coin/status/1821695356716876064
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