Gamified Ordinal & Runes NFT Collection Thrives in Post-Halving Fees Environment

The launch of the Motoko Sentinels collection just before the Bitcoin Halving, showcased the benefits of an ordinal collection on Bioniq Marketplace in a high Bitcoin fee environment.  While total ordinal volume decreased by over 58% in the first day post-halving due to high bitcoin network fees, the volume of the Motoko Sentinel collection actually increased 20%.  Bioniq, leveraging ICP’s ckBTC digital bitcoin twin, is able to maintain transaction costs at 10 sats regardless of the fee environment on the native chain.

Motoko Sentinels are highly gamified, with holders needing to complete missions to earn XP and unlock new layers of the art and additional functionality, including the ability to mint Runes from the Ordinal. An additional integration to inscribe BRC-20 tokens or bridge tokens within the Bitcoin ecosystem is currently on the roadmap.

Motoko Sentinels is the first large-scale gamified Ordinal collection on Bioniq and highlights a key strategic move for the marketplace towards enabling additional functionality for Ordinal collections. Using Bioniq’s game standard, creators can leverage NFT-holder interactions to create intricate games based on the Ordinal NFTs, unlocking ways for its communities to engage and interact with the collectibles. 

Bioniq’s strategy hinges on the promise of dynamic ordinals, giving more utility to holders and adding more flexibility to the fledgling Ordinals ecosystem. Many of these features are enabled by Internet Computer Protocol’s direct integration with Bitcoin. By utilizing ICP smart contracts, Bioniq Marketplace can augment static Ordinals with advanced features. ICP is capable of directly running a Bitcoin light node, which makes it the ideal solution for building Bitcoin Layer-2 equivalent solutions. The Sentinel artwork is powered by BitGen, a custom inscription standard developed by Bioniq, which slashes inscription costs to become only slightly higher than a regular Bitcoin transaction.  Each image in the Sentinels collection exceeds 100kb, due to the 3D and animated nature, meaning the BitGen standard could save inscribers hundreds of thousands of dollars in inscription fees.

Motoko Sentinels is the second Motoko collection designed by Jon Ball of Poked Studios. His artwork leverages the iconic Motoko ghost character, re-imagined in a sleeker 3D format while paying homage to the rough nature of a sentinel. The collection includes 3D-animated artwork giving the appearance of each Sentinel flying through space, sometimes accompanied by its colleagues. The collection of 10,000 unique items was fully minted in three days and currently sits in the top-30 of all Bitcoin Ordinals projects by secondary trading volume.

“Sentinels are a great showcase of amazing art coupled with the latest in Ordinal and Bitcoin Layer-2 technology,” said Bob Bodily, Bioniq CEO. “While static Ordinals are about art and culture, new dynamic Ordinals are more about engagement and experience. We believe that new developments in Bitcoin L2s will make Ordinals the most exciting tech stack for NFT, gaming and more.”

About Bioniq

Bioniq is the fastest, most user-friendly and most advanced marketplaces for Ordinals. Built since February 2023 by a team of blockchain and NFT veterans, Bioniq’s vision is to onboard the next billion users to digital asset ownership on Bitcoin, the oldest and most trusted blockchain for storing value. The platform leverages advanced technology including ICP and its Bitcoin Layer2-adjacent solutions, combining the latest in technology with a fast and seamless UX for both experienced and new Ordinal users.