5. Terminology

Rune mints can be open (allowing anyone to mint) or closed, subject to terms:

Cap: Total mintable supply Amount: Units created per mint.

Start/End Height: Blocks between which minting is allowed Start/End Offset: Blocks from etching between which minting is allowed

Minting: When a mint is open per its terms, anyone can mint that rune by creating new units up to the cap.

Transferring: Input runes transfer to outputs, modulated by Runestone edicts (rune ID, amount, output) and pointers specifying a default output. Remaining unallocated runes follow the runestone pointer or first non-OP_RETURN output.

Burning: Runes can "burn" (destroy) by transferring to OP_RETURN outputs via edicts/pointers.

Cenotaphs: Invalid Runestones with malformed data are "cenotaphs". Input runes are burned, etched runes are unmintable, and minted runes burn - though counting against the cap.

Cenotaphs allow introducing new runestone semantics in the future, while appearing to legacy clients as simply burning runes instead of relocating them unpredictably.