Alkanes Generated 61% of Bitcoin Transactions Over 90 Days, SUBFROST Reports

According to data from SUBFROST, the entity behind the protocol, a Bitcoin metaprotocol akin to Ordinals generated the majority of Bitcoin transactions during a 90-day period that closed in September.

SUBFROST reports that between June 23 and Sept. 20, Alkanes accounted for 61.1% of all bitcoin transactions, spanning blocks 954,917 to 967,918 — roughly 59.9 million transactions. Over that same period, the company says the protocol consumed 40.3% of block space by weight, 94.2% of OP_RETURN bytes and 13.4% of total transaction-fee income.

Alkanes is a Bitcoin metaprotocol constructed atop the Runes protocol. SUBFROST, a U.S.-facing company led by co-founder Gabe Lee, maintains it alongside RWP IV, the original protocol author. Nearly all of the Alkanese community resides in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region, indicating an engaged user base for Bitcoin-adjacent technology that the West may not know about.

SUBFROST provides complete Chinese-language documentation and a Chinese metrics page, and operates an official Chinese Telegram channel for DIESEL. In 2025, Chinese media reported that the majority of Alkanes discussion on X originated from Chinese-speaking users, with many referring to UniSat, a widely used Hong Kong wallet. During this year, the company hosted a workshop in China, featured Lee and RWP IV on a China stage, and exhibited at Bitcoin Asia in Hong Kong.

These on-chain traffic numbers come from a daily file SUBFROST releases under an MIT license. Live charts appear at subfrost.io/metrics, and the raw series is available on GitHub. The company classifies a transaction as Alkanes if an OP_RETURN runestone contains a protostone carrying protocol tag 1.

SUBFROST told Bitcoin Magazine in a press release that 99.7% of UNCOMMON•GOODS Runes mints in that period were also DIESEL mints. The emission function lies on Alkanes’ genesis contract. In a July explainer, the company wrote, “almost all of this Alkanes activity is one operation, the DIESEL mint.” That is a rune on top of a rune, so to speak.

Alkanes does not alter Bitcoin consensus nor operate as a sidechain. Its contract code uses WebAssembly and is deployed once within witness data. Subsequently, users transmit function calls through a Runes-format runestone. A distinct indexer, Metashrew, processes those calls. Full nodes verify the Bitcoin transaction but do not validate Alkanes balances.

This wrapper explains why the same activity appeared as Runes in June. CryptoQuant observed Bitcoin network activity reaching its highest point since late 2024, with daily transactions exceeding 800,000, linking the OP_RETURN spike to Runes, Ordinals and BRC-20. Bitcoin Magazine reported that reading on June 22. CoinDesk, citing Glassnode, noted daily transactions surpassing 820,000, with over 600,000 runestones, and attributed the surge to Runes. No mention of Alkanes appeared in those reports.

Separately, Renaud Cuny — author of Bitcoin Block Space Weekly and a tracker of BIP-110 — tallied Alkanes protostones at 91% of OP_RETURN outputs across a 60-day period.

Alkanes went live at block 880,000 on Jan. 20, 2025, alongside the deployment of the DIESEL contract. The project was developed at Oyl Corp. In January 2026, Oyl announced it was ceasing operations and that SUBFROST would take over protocol maintenance.