Motoko Sentinels, a new ordinal collection launched on the Bioniq Marketplace, saw its trading volume increase following the Bitcoin halving, despite high trading volumes immediately after the event.
Although total ordinal volume was down by more than 58% the day after Bitcoin’s halving due to high network fees, the Motoko Sentinel Collection saw trading volume increase by 20%.
Kyle Langham, director of data and analytics at DFINITY, told Blockworks that this is because the Bioniq marketplace runs on the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP). This network, which is naturally integrated with Bitcoin, can maintain lower transaction fees regardless of the fee environment in the native Bitcoin chain.
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“ICP is what you call a third-generation blockchain. We’re not trying to replicate Ethereum or Solana; we are trying to replicate AWS, but on the blockchain,” Langham said.
Applications hosted on ICP will already be integrated with Web2, allowing developers to make API calls on ICP. The team is also working on Web3 integrations, or what they call “chain fusion.”
“A year and a half ago we integrated with Bitcoin at the protocol level, so there is a Bitcoin light node running on ICP that allows developers to build ordinal marketplaces – like Bioniq – on top of ICP that can communicate directly with the Bitcoin network,” says Langham . said.
Bob Bodily, co-founder and CEO of Bioniq, notes that by building on ICP, the marketplace can offer users faster transactions at lower fees.
“You can do more with your ordinal numbers and with your runes or BRC-20 tokens if you bridge them to a more programmable blockchain,” Bodily said. “There are many restrictions on Bitcoin One.”
Bodily explains that users using ordinal marketplaces on Bitcoin layer-1 may encounter issues such as MEV bots and be sniped in the mempool.
“In general, it’s expensive to transact with Bitcoin in a higher-fee environment, so the whole goal of Bioniq was to create a layer that allows people to do more with their ordinal numbers, which is fun, interesting and engaging is,” Bodily said.
Despite these benefits, Blockworks’ initial testing on the Bioniq platform encountered some technical issues, including errors during transactions and registration issues, which were ultimately resolved. These challenges highlighted areas for potential improvement in the user experience.
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Motoko Sentinels is Bioniq’s first project to explore this area. These individual NFTs can be sent out on missions to gain experience and ‘level up’.
“As they level up, you get more layers on your Motoko, and you can eventually attribute them directly to Bitcoin as part of the gameplay,” he said. “This means they are minted on a Bitcoin tier-2, with the option to subscribe to Bitcoin at a later date, which is very useful when fees are high.”
At the time of writing there are three inscribed Motoko Sentinels. The collection has a trading volume of 3.75 and a floor price of 0.002 (~$127).