Motoko Sentinels gain traction despite ordinal volume decrease post-halving

Motoko Sentinels, a new ordinal collection that launched on the Bioniq Marketplace, saw its trading volume increase following the Bitcoin halving, despite the high trading volumes immediately following the event.

Although total ordinal volume had decreased by over 58% the day following the Bitcoin halving due to high network fees, the Motoko Sentinel collection saw its trading volume increase by 20%.

Kyle Langham, the director of data and analytics at DFINITY, told Blockworks that this is because the Bioniq marketplace operates on the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP). This network, which is natively integrated with Bitcoin, can maintain lower transaction costs regardless of the fee environment on the native Bitcoin chain.

Newsletter

Subscribe to Blockworks Daily

“ICP is what you call a generation three blockchain. We’re not trying to replicate Ethereum or Solana; we’re trying to replicate AWS but on the blockchain,” Langham said.

Applications hosted on ICP will already be integrated with Web2, enabling developers to make API calls on ICP. The team is also working on Web3 integrations, or what it calls “chain fusion.”

“We integrated with Bitcoin a year and a half ago at the protocol level, so there’s a Bitcoin light node running on ICP facilitating developers to build ordinal marketplaces — like Bioniq — on top of ICP that can communicate directly with the Bitcoin network,” Langham said.

Bob Bodily, co-founder and CEO of Bioniq, notes that through building on ICP, the marketplace can offer users faster transactions at lower costs.

“You can do more with your ordinals, and with your runes, or BRC-20 tokens when you bridge them to a more programmable blockchain,” Bodily said. “There are a lot of limitations on Bitcoin One.”

Bodily explains that users using ordinal marketplaces on Bitcoin layer-1 may encounter problems like MEV bots and getting sniped in the mempool.

“Generally, it’s expensive to transact on Bitcoin in a higher fee environment, so the whole goal of Bioniq was to create a layer for people to do more with their ordinals that is fun, interesting and engaging,” Bodily said.

Despite these advantages, 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, you get more layers on your Motoko, and you can eventually go and ascribe them directly on Bitcoin as part of the gameplay,” he said. “This means they’re minted on a Bitcoin layer-2, with the ability to inscribe to Bitcoin at a subsequent later date, which is really handy 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).

Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Blockworks Daily: The newsletter that helps thousands of investors understand crypto and the markets, by Byron Gilliam.
Empire: Start your morning with the top news and analysis to inform your day in crypto.
Forward Guidance: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.
0xResearch: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.
Lightspeed: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto’s hottest networks.
The Drop: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.
Supply Shock: Tracking Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.