Runes DEX secures $2 million seed investment for Bitcoin AMM

Runes DEX, an automated market maker (AMM) platform for Runes on the Bitcoin network, has announced the successful closure of a $2 million seed investment round.

The Runes DEX platform will facilitate the trade of meme-based tokens while providing liquidity solutions and farming rewards for users, according to a statement shared with The Block.

"Our vision at Runes DEX is to set the standard for liquidity and trading solutions on Bitcoin, leveraging the innate security and broad reach of the network," Runes DEX CEO King of Runes said.

The investment round saw funding from industry heads such as Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier and SushiSwap founder 0xMaki. The funding will be used to expand the technical infrastructure of Runes DEX and enhance its user interface.

Ledger CEO Pascal Gautier spoke about the decentralized aspect of the new application layer built on top of the Bitcoin network. "You'll need to own your private keys to interact with Layer 2s and the protocol application layer. If not self-custody, why crypto? More power to the user, more power to decentralization," he added.

Runes DEX a 'game changer' for Bitcoin

Mechanism Capital Managing Partner Andrew Kang said that Runes DEX is "a gamechanger for Bitcoin." He described how it allows users to transact with much less friction than existing ordinals protocols like BRC-20. "It is difficult from here to see which assets will win, but just like with Uniswap on Ethereum, the first automated market maker on Runes, Runes DEX, will be at the epicenter of the action," he added.

Runes DEX also announced a public presale of its tokens, with details about the presale to be revealed shortly on Runes DEX's X account.

The presale is part of a Token Generation Event scheduled for Saturday, April 20, 2024, which coincides with the Bitcoin halving.

Runes hype escalates

Runes is a new protocol from Casey Rodarmor, the Bitcoin developer behind Ordinals. While the primary ideas behind Ordinals focused on bringing non-fungibility to Bitcoin, by differentiating specific satoshis by the order in which they were minted, the BRC-20 token standard also emerged, helping to bring new issuance of fungible tokens to the network.

Runes is like BRC-20 in the sense that its goal is to allow new tokens to be traded on Bitcoin, but unlike BRC-20, Runes will use a UTXO (unspent transaction output) model.

Rodarmor announced Runes in September 2023, and essentially, it is supposed to be a more efficient implementation of token issuance.