Alkanes transactions accounted for 61.1% of all Bitcoin transactions between June 23 and Sept. 20, 2025, according to figures published by SUBFROST, the U.S.-facing company that maintains the metaprotocol. That's roughly 59.9 million transactions across blocks 954,917 through 967,918. Over the same 90-day window, Alkanes consumed 40.3% of block space by weight and 94.2% of all OP_RETURN bytes.
The numbers SUBFROST is publishing
SUBFROST puts out daily onchain traffic figures under an MIT license, with live charts at subfrost.io/metrics and the underlying data on GitHub. The counting rule is specific: a transaction qualifies as Alkanes when an OP_RETURN runestone contains a protostone with protocol tag 1. That's a narrower definition than "stuff on Runes," which matters because the broader category gets credited with most of the OP_RETURN surge in press coverage.
The same data set shows Alkanes pulling in 13.4% of transaction-fee revenue during the window. That's a lopsided ratio — 61% of transaction count, 40% of block weight, 13% of fees — and it tells you what kind of traffic this is. Lots of small transactions, not a fee-market arms race.
What Alkanes actually is
Alkanes is a Bitcoin metaprotocol built on top of Runes, maintained by SUBFROST and led by co-founder Gabe Lee alongside the original protocol author, who goes by RWP IV. It launched at block 880,000 on Jan. 20, 2025, when the DIESEL contract was deployed, and it was built at Oyl Corp.
It doesn't change Bitcoin consensus and doesn't run as a sidechain. Contract code is WebAssembly deployed once in witness data. Later users send function calls inside a Runes-format runestone, and a separate indexer called Metashrew executes those calls. Full nodes confirm the Bitcoin transaction but do not validate Alkanes balances — a distinction that matters for anyone assuming Bitcoin's own security guarantees extend to contract state.
An APAC community the English press missed
Alkanes' user base is almost entirely from Asia Pacific. SUBFROST ships full Chinese documentation, a Chinese metrics page, and an official Chinese-language Telegram for DIESEL. Chinese outlets noted in 2025 that most Alkanes discussion on X came from Chinese-speaking users, many of them mentioning Hong Kong wallet UniSat. The company ran a workshop in China, put Lee and RWP IV on a China stage, and took a booth at Bitcoin Asia in Hong Kong.
That geographic skew helps explain the coverage gap. CryptoQuant reported Bitcoin network activity at its highest level since late 2024, with daily transactions above 800,000, and tied the OP_RETURN surge to Runes, Ordinals, and BRC-20. CoinDesk, citing Glassnode, said daily transactions topped 820,000 with more than 600,000 runestones, and attributed the move to Runes. Neither report named Alkanes.
Renaud Cuny, who writes Bitcoin Block Space Weekly and tracks BIP-110, counted Alkanes protostones as 91% of OP_RETURN outputs over a separate 60-day window. Different method, different window, same general conclusion.
DIESEL mints and a handover
SUBFROST also stated that 99.7% of UNCOMMON•GOODS Runes mints in the window were also DIESEL mints — DIESEL being the emission function on Alkanes' genesis contract. In other words, one asset's minting activity and the metaprotocol's overall traffic are effectively the same phenomenon right now.
The maintenance picture shifted in January 2026, when Oyl said it was winding down operations and that SUBFROST would lead protocol maintenance going forward. Oyl built Alkanes; SUBFROST now runs it.
The open question is whether the next 90-day window looks anything like the last one. SUBFROST publishes daily, so the answer will show up at subfrost.io/metrics before it shows up anywhere else.
