Moxin Observation | Bitcoin’s second-most congested block ever: 11,204 transactions minting the same Rune, at about 11 sats per mint
At 8:04 a.m. (UTC+8) on November 8, AntPool mined Bitcoin block 975,005, which contained 11,360 transactions—second only to F2Pool’s 12,239-transaction block in 2015. The total fees for the entire block came to just 0.0021 BTC, or about $154.
Of those, 11,204 transactions were all minting the same Rune, UNCOMMON•GOODS, using the same script run by four wallets: 25 transactions per round, with 447 rounds in this block. That works out to about 11 sats per Rune minted.
https://mempool.space/block/000000000000000000007d3f14a759493bd3f9845362eab76a23677cc0d34872
🐋 What is UNCOMMON•GOODS?
It’s the first Rune built into the Runes protocol, numbered 1:0, written directly into the ord code, with no issuance transaction:
- One Rune minted at a time; indivisible, with no premine
- The supply cap is set to the maximum value of u128, effectively unlimited
- It can only be minted between blocks 840,000 and 1,050,000—that is, from the 2024 halving to the 2028 halving
Anyone can keep minting it; the only thing that matters is the cost.
🐋 25 transactions per round, 1 sat each
This script uses P2A (Pay-to-Anchor) outputs. Supported starting with Bitcoin Core 28 in 2024, these are outputs that anyone can spend, without a signature.
1. First transaction: The wallet spends one of its own coins, mints 1 Rune, sends the change back to the wallet, and puts another 263 sats into a P2A output.
2. Middle 23 transactions: Each spends the previous transaction’s P2A output and mints 1 Rune. The minted Rune travels down the chain with the P2A output, whose value drops by 1 sat each time, from 262 to 240. No signature is needed; each transaction is only 80 bytes and costs 1 sat in fees.
3. Final transaction: The wallet takes back both the change from the first transaction and the 240-sat P2A output at the end of the chain (which has accumulated 23 Runes), then mints 1 more Rune. The fee is 242 sats.
A round totals 2,145 vB and 267 sats in fees, averaging 0.124 sat/vB, to mint 25 Runes. The final transaction’s fee rate is about 1.45 sat/vB. The mining pool packages transactions based on the average fee rate of the entire group, so the 24 preceding transactions with 1-sat fees were included in the block too.
The first transaction of one round:
https://mempool.space/tx/bd75648bce37c5fce1b73c771799f3038db05d0eb7c53162af193a0395e04555
🐋 The cost of minting one
The 447 rounds were started by four wallets, which ran 209, 138, 70, and 30 rounds, respectively. The 25 Runes minted in each round all eventually returned to the wallet that initiated it.
The minting transactions in this block paid about 119,000 sats in fees in total. At a Bitcoin price of $73,943, that’s about $88—more than half of the block’s total fees.
UNCOMMON•GOODS is currently quoted at 16.8 sats per Rune on CoinGecko (11/9, 15:40), so minting one costs a little over 60% of its quoted price. But its trading volume over the past 24 hours was only about $12,000. At the quoted price, the 11,204 Runes minted in this block would be worth only around $140.
🐋 It’s not just this block
In the blocks over the preceding nine days, eight had more than 10,000 transactions, all after the early hours of 11/5: AntPool mined six, and SpiderPool and ViaBTC mined one each. Half an hour after block 975,005, ViaBTC mined block 975,009, which also contained 10,109 transactions minting UNCOMMON•GOODS.
As of 11/9, 15:40, there were still 33.51 million vB of transactions queued in the mempool, of which about 19.55 million vB had fee rates around 0.12 sat/vB—matching the rate for one round of this script.
With a cost of 11 sats, a quoted price of 16.8 sats, and daily trading volume of $12,000, how much longer can this price gap keep the script running?
——
First published on X: @musinoot
At 8:04 a.m. (UTC+8) on November 8, AntPool mined Bitcoin block 975,005, which contained 11,360 transactions—second only to F2Pool’s 12,239-transaction block in 2015. The total fees for the entire block came to just 0.0021 BTC, or about $154.
Of those, 11,204 transactions were all minting the same Rune, UNCOMMON•GOODS, using the same script run by four wallets: 25 transactions per round, with 447 rounds in this block. That works out to about 11 sats per Rune minted.
https://mempool.space/block/000000000000000000007d3f14a759493bd3f9845362eab76a23677cc0d34872
🐋 What is UNCOMMON•GOODS?
It’s the first Rune built into the Runes protocol, numbered 1:0, written directly into the ord code, with no issuance transaction:
- One Rune minted at a time; indivisible, with no premine
- The supply cap is set to the maximum value of u128, effectively unlimited
- It can only be minted between blocks 840,000 and 1,050,000—that is, from the 2024 halving to the 2028 halving
Anyone can keep minting it; the only thing that matters is the cost.
🐋 25 transactions per round, 1 sat each
This script uses P2A (Pay-to-Anchor) outputs. Supported starting with Bitcoin Core 28 in 2024, these are outputs that anyone can spend, without a signature.
1. First transaction: The wallet spends one of its own coins, mints 1 Rune, sends the change back to the wallet, and puts another 263 sats into a P2A output.
2. Middle 23 transactions: Each spends the previous transaction’s P2A output and mints 1 Rune. The minted Rune travels down the chain with the P2A output, whose value drops by 1 sat each time, from 262 to 240. No signature is needed; each transaction is only 80 bytes and costs 1 sat in fees.
3. Final transaction: The wallet takes back both the change from the first transaction and the 240-sat P2A output at the end of the chain (which has accumulated 23 Runes), then mints 1 more Rune. The fee is 242 sats.
A round totals 2,145 vB and 267 sats in fees, averaging 0.124 sat/vB, to mint 25 Runes. The final transaction’s fee rate is about 1.45 sat/vB. The mining pool packages transactions based on the average fee rate of the entire group, so the 24 preceding transactions with 1-sat fees were included in the block too.
The first transaction of one round:
https://mempool.space/tx/bd75648bce37c5fce1b73c771799f3038db05d0eb7c53162af193a0395e04555
🐋 The cost of minting one
The 447 rounds were started by four wallets, which ran 209, 138, 70, and 30 rounds, respectively. The 25 Runes minted in each round all eventually returned to the wallet that initiated it.
The minting transactions in this block paid about 119,000 sats in fees in total. At a Bitcoin price of $73,943, that’s about $88—more than half of the block’s total fees.
UNCOMMON•GOODS is currently quoted at 16.8 sats per Rune on CoinGecko (11/9, 15:40), so minting one costs a little over 60% of its quoted price. But its trading volume over the past 24 hours was only about $12,000. At the quoted price, the 11,204 Runes minted in this block would be worth only around $140.
🐋 It’s not just this block
In the blocks over the preceding nine days, eight had more than 10,000 transactions, all after the early hours of 11/5: AntPool mined six, and SpiderPool and ViaBTC mined one each. Half an hour after block 975,005, ViaBTC mined block 975,009, which also contained 10,109 transactions minting UNCOMMON•GOODS.
As of 11/9, 15:40, there were still 33.51 million vB of transactions queued in the mempool, of which about 19.55 million vB had fee rates around 0.12 sat/vB—matching the rate for one round of this script.
With a cost of 11 sats, a quoted price of 16.8 sats, and daily trading volume of $12,000, how much longer can this price gap keep the script running?
——
First published on X: @musinoot
