FAQs: General Concepts

Frequently asked questions about Runes, UTXOs, and how the Bitcoin blockchain works.

What is a UTXO?

A UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) is a concept in Bitcoin where each transaction outputs an amount of Bitcoin to an address. When this output is not yet spent, it's referred to as an unspent transaction output or UTXO.

You can think of a UTXO like a bill. If you have one $100 bill, this is like having one UTXO. When you go to spend that $100 bill, you need to pay with it, and wait to receive the change before you can spend the remainder elsewhere. However, if you split up the $100 bill, into ten $10 bills instead, you can spend all ten bills simultaneously without waiting for your transaction to complete at another place. This is the same concept of UTXOs, and why you want to split your UTXOs in advance - so that you do not have to wait for your transactions to confirm on the Bitcoin network.

Does splitting UTXOs make mints cheaper?

Splitting UTXOs doesn't directly affect mint costs but can impact transaction fees and efficiency. The advantage of splitting UTXOs allows you to mint more, faster.

Many split up UTXOs can actually result in higher transaction fees if you need to consolidate the UTXOs to cover higher fee transactions. For example, if you have to pay for a TX that costs 0.1 BTC, but you have 10 UTXOs with 0.01 BTC each, this will cost you more in transfer fees than if you just had 1 UTXO with 0.1 BTC.

Think about the physical dollar bill again here - managing more bills is more work, thus more expensive, because you have to make more "spending" operations. Spending a $100 bill is one single operation. Spending ten $10 bills takes ten operations, which will cost more.

Why is this block taking so long?

A Bitcoin block, on average, is mined approximately every 10 minutes. However, the actual block time can vary depending on factors like mining difficulty adjustments, network congestion, and block size.

What is front running?

Front running in Bitcoin means that someone is placing the same transaction as you at a higher fee rate to confirm their transaction before yours.

For example, if you are minting a Rune with a limited supply at fee rate of 20 sats/vB and there is only 10% of supply available, if others mint the remaining supply at a fee rate of 100 sats/vB therefore getting their transactions confirmed before you, you will be frontrunned.

Even if your transaction confirms later when network fee rates lower back to 20 sats/vB, you will not receive the Runes you tried to mint. In this case, you will not receive your funds back because your transaction is technically still completely valid for Bitcoin, which is not Rune aware.

Why did I get no tokens even though my transaction was confirmed?

If there is a limited supply of tokens available, and others minted at a higher fee rate than you, their transactions would be confirmed before yours, meaning the limited supply is taken by others before your transaction confirms. Unfortunately, this means that even when your transaction eventually confirms, there are no more tokens to be allocated to you.