The Next Big BTC Innovation After Ordinals and Runes?

If you follow the latest in Bitcoin happenings, then you may have seen the name “Alkanes” pop up on your timeline via Ordinals and Runes enjoyers. But what is it?

Alkanes is a new metaprotocol built on Bitcoin that introduces trustless smart contract functionality to the base layer, without relying on bridges or external execution layers. It allows developers to build apps and launch tokens natively on Bitcoin, expanding the functionality of the original blockchain.

Developed by Oyl Corp, the protocol is the result of two years of infrastructure research aimed at enabling more advanced programmability directly on Bitcoin. Decrypt spoke with Alkanes co-founder and CEO Alec Taggart to learn more about the project’s origins, purpose, and what’s next.

What is Alkanes?

Alkanes is a Bitcoin metaprotocol founded by Alec Taggart, Cole Jorissen, and Ray Pulver. It is a framework that allows developers to inscribe smart contracts directly into Bitcoin’s data layer using WASM (WebAssembly) virtual machines.

Smart contracts, which hold the code that powers decentralized applications, are common on chains like Ethereum and Solana. Bitcoin doesn’t natively support smart contracts, which has historically limited its DeFi capabilities. But developers are getting crafty, and the Alkanes protocol makes it possible to do more on Bitcoin.

It’s done in a compact, efficient format that leverages Bitcoin’s witness data and OP_RETURN field to execute and track state changes. It functions similarly to Ordinals (Bitcoin NFTs, more or less) and Runes (fungible tokens), but adds support for WASM-based smart contracts. Execution and state transitions are handled via an indexing framework, with on-chain activity tied to Bitcoin block finality.

Where the Runes and BRC-20 standards are largely limited to issuing and transferring fungible tokens, Alkanes allows for rich programmability, including automated market makers (AMMs), staking contracts, free mints, NFT swaps, and more. This is all trustlessly executed on Bitcoin itself.

Rather than competing with Ordinals or Runes, the Alkanes protocol is meant to live alongside them. Ordinals ignited cultural momentum on Bitcoin; Alkanes gives it an engine.

The protocols can interoperate—if you own an Ordinal, for instance, you might use it to mint a new Alkanes asset. This makes Alkanes a neutral but extensible base layer for broader Bitcoin innovation and development. The protocol does not require a bridge or a separate execution layer, so developers can access Bitcoin’s native data while enabling additional use cases.

Oyl’s founders, veterans of Ethereum’s DeFi stack, saw Bitcoin’s potential not just as a store of value but as a settlement layer for fully expressive apps. The 2023 launch of Ordinals sparked cultural and economic activity on Bitcoin, but Taggart said that true composability remained elusive, until now.

“Alkanes is the result of years of hard research and conviction,” Taggart said. “It proves that Bitcoin doesn’t need to imitate Ethereum to evolve. It’s a native system built for those who believe Bitcoin is enough.”

How it works

Alkanes introduces protostones, a new data primitive akin to runestones in Runes. Each protostone can include multiple messages, enabling a range of actions beyond simple issuance, creating, swapping, minting, and burning, all encoded and executed via a WASM runtime.

Every asset on Alkanes is treated like a token and a contract. The platform uses a factory model to enable efficient contract deployment. Rather than redeploying contracts for each new asset, developers can simply pass new parameters to a template. This leads to saving on blockspace and fees.

In Alkanes, all assets—fungible and non-fungible—are treated as tokens. NFTs are referred to as “Orbitals,” a standard developed by the community that emerged shortly after the protocol’s launch. Alkanes fungible tokens are comparable to ERC-20s on Ethereum, with full smart contract support and composability.

The first token deployed on Alkanes was Diesel, which mirrors Bitcoin’s emission schedule. It is minted through Bitcoin blocks, using an opcode that tracks the block reward and ties issuance directly to Bitcoin’s halving cycle.

Alkanes differs from Runes and BRC-20s in that ticker names are not globally unique. Each token has a unique identifier, so the same name (e.g., “Methane”) can exist under multiple IDs, preventing the kind of name squatting seen in other standards.

Popular NFT collections include Alkane Pandas, which have a strong and devoted community, and Oyly on Alkanes, the first free mint collection on Alkanes.

What’s next?

The Alkanes team is building a native AMM for Alkanes, along with establishing ecosystem partnerships around stablecoins (Bound), block explorers (Ordiscan, Unisat), wallet libraries (LaserEyes), and DeFi protocols. These components will allow developers to build full-stack apps using only Bitcoin primitives.

“These applications aim to demonstrate how developers can build full dapps directly on Bitcoin using Alkanes infrastructure,” Taggart adds.

Oyl Corp has also released its indexing engine, Metashrew, and all related infrastructure as open-source software, allowing developers to inspect, fork, or contribute to the protocol’s growth.

The Alkanes protocol launched in early 2025 at block 880000, marked by the deployment of the Diesel contract. While the community mint followed later in early March, it was hardcoded to initialize once the protocol began scanning for messages from that block onward.

Since launch, the project has grown organically through developer experimentation and open-source contributions, as Bitcoin builders work to foster a sustainable ecosystem.

“Alkanes’ goal isn’t just to create another token standard, it’s to give developers a platform where composability, liquidity, and sovereignty can finally converge on Bitcoin,” Taggart said.

Edited by Andrew Hayward