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.

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“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.

Read more: Bitcoin Runes look to spice up the halving party

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).