Bitcoin Alkanes protocol: The next wave of BTC innovation after Ordinals and Runes?

With the Ordinals and Runes protocols igniting the Bitcoin ecosystem craze, a new meta-protocol is gradually emerging - Alkanes. In mid-2025, Alkanes will become a new breakthrough point for Bitcoin's native application capabilities, opening a door for developers to deploy smart contracts and issue Tokens on Bitcoin. - Produced by AiCoin Research Institute

The Alkanes protocol is becoming another major investment option for on-chain retail investors and speculative funds after BRC-20.

1. What is the Alkanes protocol?

Alkanes is a new type of metaprotocol built on the Bitcoin mainnet, developed by Oyl Corp, aimed at introducing trustless smart contracts functionality to the Bitcoin base layer without relying on bridging or external execution layers.

The witness data of Bitcoin and the OP_RETURN field are used to execute smart contracts and track state changes, with the relevant execution logic and state transitions handled through an indexing framework. All on-chain activities are directly associated with the block generation and finality status of Bitcoin.

In terms of technology, Alkanes is similar to Ordinals (NFT) and Runes (Token), but significantly expands the functional dimension, supporting a smart contracts execution environment based on WASM (WebAssembly), making it possible to build applications, asset issuance, protocol interactions, and more.

2. Core capabilities: Programmability stronger than Runes and BRC-20

Unlike Runes and the BRC-20 standard, which are primarily used for token issuance and transfers, Alkanes provides full smart contracts programmability, supporting:

Automated Market Maker (AMM)

Staking smart contracts

Free Mint

Complex logic such as NFT exchanges

All of these features can be executed natively and trustlessly on the Bitcoin chain, without relying on any side chains or Layer 2.

The Alkanes protocol does not compete with Ordinals or Runes, but can run in parallel and collaborate with each other. For example, users can mint new Alkanes assets using Ordinal NFTs, achieving combinations and interoperability between protocols.

3. Key Technologies: Protostones and Orbitals Standards

The Alkanes protocol introduces a new on-chain data primitive: Protostones, similar to the Runestones in the Runes protocol. Each Protostone can contain multiple information instructions, which can be used to implement complex operations such as minting, exchanging, and destroying, all of which are executed by the WASM runtime.

In Alkanes, all assets—whether homogeneous tokens or NFTs—are considered part of the Token architecture:

NFT is referred to as Orbitals, a standard proposed and widely adopted by the community;

Homogeneous tokens are similar to Ethereum's ERC-20, but with full smart contracts support and composability.

Template Factory Mechanism

The protocol uses "factory pattern" to deploy smart contracts, allowing developers to directly pass parameters to existing templates without the need for repeated deployment, saving block space and on-chain costs, and improving efficiency.

Four, representative projects and assets

Diesel (柴油) Token: The first deployed token on Alkanes, its issuance rhythm is linked to Bitcoin block rewards and fully follows the BTC halving cycle.

Alkane Pandas: One of the currently active NFT community projects.

Oyly on Alkanes: The first free mint collection on Alkanes.

Participants and ecosystem observers should note: the current gameplay of inscriptions/NFTs is similar to the early BRC-20. If you want to discover opportunities in the new protocol, you still need to focus on the on-chain activities in the memory pool.

5. Key Differences with Other Protocols

Ticker names are not globally unique: each token has a unique ID, allowing multiple identical names (such as Methane) to coexist, which avoids the name squatting problem seen in Runes and BRC-20.

Not relying on sidechains or EVM: fully operates based on the BTC native data layer;

Support for rich applications: complete on-chain native implementation of functions such as DeFi, NFT, Swap, Mint, Staking, etc.

6. Ecological Construction and Future Planning

The Alkanes team is building a complete set of native tools and protocol components, including:

Native AMM (Automated Market Maker)

Stablecoin project Bound

Block explorer integration (e.g., Ordiscan, Unisat)

Wallet Library (LaserEyes)

DeFi protocol support

Its goal is to create a fully Bitcoin-native application development stack (Full-stack DApp) without relying on other chains.

Oyl Corp has also open-sourced its indexing engine Metashrew and related infrastructure, making it easier for developers to review, replicate, or contribute code.

7. Protocol Launch and Development History

Protocol launch time: early 2025, the Diesel contract will be officially deployed at block 880000.

Community Mint Launch: Officially starting in early March;

Protocol mechanism: From the block where it goes live, the protocol begins to scan the block data, automatically identifying and executing instructions.

Currently, the project is gradually growing through continuous experiments by developers and open-source collaboration. It has attracted some BTC protocol OGs and Runes project developers to participate in interaction and ecosystem building.

8. Current Status of Protocol Development and On-Chain Data Performance

Since its launch in early 2025, the Alkanes protocol has shown strong momentum in ecological expansion. In addition to the continued activity of the developer community and the advancement of open-source infrastructure, its on-chain usage has significantly surged.

According to the Jinmaa data panel, as of June 2025, Alkanes has become the third largest protocol in terms of daily transaction volume on the Bitcoin mainnet, second only to Runes and BRC-20.

On June 18, 2025, Alkanes achieved a daily trading peak of 159,700 transactions, marking its extensive penetration in practical application layers. This data also indicates that Alkanes has become one of the core forces driving the development of the Bitcoin on-chain application ecosystem.

9. The new entry of the BTC application ecosystem's "combinability + sovereignty + liquidity"

Alkanes is not just another token standard, but a development platform that provides Bitcoin developers with a combination of composability, sovereignty, and native liquidity. It may become one of the most representative technological transformation forces in the Bitcoin ecosystem following the cultural revolution triggered by Ordinals and the token experiments driven by Runes.

According to a report by Messari, Alkanes marks the next stage of evolution for the Bitcoin meta-protocol, moving from static token issuance to dynamic application deployment.