According to Blockworks, Motoko Sentinels, a new ordinal collection that debuted on the Bioniq Marketplace, experienced a surge in trading volume following the Bitcoin halving. This occurred despite a significant drop in overall ordinal volume by over 58% the day after the Bitcoin halving due to high network fees. However, the Motoko Sentinel collection saw its trading volume rise by 20%.
Kyle Langham, the director of data and analytics at DFINITY, attributes this to the Bioniq marketplace's operation on the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP). This network, which is natively integrated with Bitcoin, can maintain lower transaction costs irrespective of the fee environment on the native Bitcoin chain. Langham explained that ICP is a third-generation blockchain, aiming to replicate AWS but on the blockchain, not Ethereum or Solana.
Applications hosted on ICP are already integrated with Web2, allowing developers to make API calls on ICP. The team is also working on Web3 integrations, or what they refer to as 'chain fusion.' Langham stated that they integrated with Bitcoin at the protocol level a year and a half ago, enabling developers to build ordinal marketplaces like Bioniq on top of ICP that can communicate directly with the Bitcoin network.
Bob Bodily, co-founder and CEO of Bioniq, emphasized that building on ICP allows the marketplace to offer users faster transactions at lower costs. However, Blockworks' initial tests on the Bioniq platform encountered some technical difficulties, including errors during transactions and registration issues, which were eventually resolved. These challenges highlighted areas for potential improvement in user experience.
Motoko Sentinels is Bioniq’s first project to explore this area. These individual NFTs can be sent out on missions to earn experience and 'level up.' As they level up, more layers are added to your Motoko, and they can eventually be ascribed directly on Bitcoin as part of the gameplay. This means they’re minted on a Bitcoin layer-2, with the ability to inscribe to Bitcoin at a subsequent later date, which is particularly 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).