TL; DR
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The team behind Runes has developed a way to programmatically reduce the minimum required number of letters by one character per 17,500 blocks to prevent name squatting.
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Is Runes the most interesting and well-thought-out innovation since the creation of Bitcoin itself?
It just might be possible!
We’ve already written about the Rune Protocol here and here – and today we’re back to explain why so many Runes project names are so long and weird.
A quick scroll through Runes on Magical Eden shows names like: DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON, Z•Z•Z•Z•Z•FEHU•Z•Z•Z•Z•Z and even ALL•YOUR•TICKERS•SUCK.
Then why those long names? Why not something simple like ‘jack‘?
The reason for this is that there is a minimum name length built into the Rune protocol to prevent name squatting.
(i.e. the use of a name commonly recognized as a brand or trademark with the plan to sell it virtually at ransom for a profit to that brand in the future).
There have been name-cracking waves during the .com boom, and pretty much any time a new social platform gains any kind of traction.
To prevent this, the team behind Runes has come up with a way to programmatically reduce the minimum required number of letters by one character per 17,500 blocks.
In this way, as Runes is really taking off, by the time ‘Nike’ is available they will be ready to make a project with that name immediately.
(And if they never take off enough that Nike has to get involved, then it doesn’t really matter anyway).
Smart system!