Embedded Data charts/OP_RETURN Protocol Share

OP_RETURN Protocol Share

Detected OP_RETURN outputs by protocol. Runes were 97.0% of them in 2024, the year they launched, and over 97% so far in 2026

Short ranges plot one point per block, about one every ten minutes. Longer ranges plot one point per day, computed from every block in that day. How it is computed depends on the chart: some average, some total the day up, some are a ratio of the day's sums, and each chart says which. Either way a brief spike inside a day is smoothed away.

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Key factsCalculated from the points currently plotted, so they follow the range you pick. Zooming with the slider changes only what you see, not these.

over selected range

OverlaysExtra context drawn on top of the chart. Event markers are vertical lines at dated moments; a comparison series is a second set of numbers on its own axis at the right.

Event markers

Every 210,000 blocks, roughly every four years, the block subsidy halves. Fees are the other part of what a miner collects and do not halve with it. Four halvings have happened so far.

A BIP is a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal: a design document for a change to the protocol. These lines mark the dates that proposals such as SegWit and Taproot became active on the network.

Releases of Bitcoin Core, the software most nodes run. A release does not change consensus rules by itself, but it often changes what transactions a node will relay, which can show up in these charts.

Dated moments outside the protocol that moved the numbers: exchange failures, country-level bans, the first Ordinals inscriptions.

Comparison series

The BTC price in US dollars, drawn on its own axis on the right. Sampled every 4 days, which is all the source provides for the full history, so a range shorter than that cannot draw it. Price crosses six orders of magnitude, so it usually wants the logarithmic setting beside it.

The total size of the block chain on disk, growing as blocks are added. An archival node keeps every byte of it; a pruned one verifies the same blocks and then discards the old ones.

one at a time: they share the right axis

RelatedCharts measuring the same thing or covering the same part of the network, for reading this one in context.

Detected Embedded Data, Block Share Inscription Fee Share Inscription Block Share OP_RETURN Block Share

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About this metric

Definition

Which protocol is using the OP_RETURN space. Runes launched in the halving block, 840,000 on 2024-04-20, and took almost all of it immediately: 97.0% of detected OP_RETURN outputs that year.

How it is measured

Each protocol's detected OP_RETURN outputs as a share of all detected OP_RETURN outputs in the block. Detection is by script prefix, so an unrecognised protocol lands in the residual band rather than being missed entirely.

Measured from my own Bitcoin node. Methodology