Toniq, a company building professional tools and services on the decentralized web, has announced the launch of Bioniq, a new Bitcoin-based non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace on the Internet Computer (ICP). Bioniq has two objectives: facilitating a simple means of buying and selling Bitcoin NFTs and helping alleviate Bitcoin congestion. Network fees on Bitcoin recently surpassed Ethereum for the first time since 2020, caused by the en-masse minting of BRC-20 tokens and other NFT-like assets via the Bitcoin blockchain — often in the form of speculative “meme coins.” 

The total market capitalization of BRC-20 tokens is already exceeding $3 billion while more than 42.6 million Ordinals have been minted to date, leading to the blockchain’s congestion due to increased strain. As a result, Bitcoin fees have recently exceeded those of Ethereum by a large margin, making BTC transactions significantly more expensive. Backed by leading crypto-focused VC firm Polychain Capital, Bioniq was designed to solve these issues, helping people to buy, sell, exchange, and auction their Bitcoin NFTs in the most user-friendly and seamless way while alleviating congestion on the Bitcoin network. 

To seamlessly transact their Bitcoin-based NFTs, known as Ordinals, Bioniq offers users a built-in wallet with smart wallet features. It also allows people to easily manage their private keys by leveraging Web3Auth, enabling users to log in with their Gmail accounts in a non-custodial way. Unlike other ordinal marketplaces that use “partially signed bitcoin transactions” (PSBTs) to facilitate marketplace transactions at the cost and speed of Bitcoin, Bioniq leverages the Internet Computer’s native integration with the Bitcoin Network, unlocking smart contract capabilities for Bitcoin — allowing users to trade their assets within the ICP ecosystem while avoiding risky centralized bridges.

Another primary benefit of this is that the Internet Computer is faster and more cost-effective than Ethereum or Bitcoin — with less than 2-second transaction finality times and zero gas fees or network fees. Because of the internet computer’s unique architecture, storage costs are far lower, roughly costing just $5 to store one gigabyte of data on the network annually. Moreover, because of the smart contract capabilities unlocked via direct integration, Bioniq delivers many features that marketplaces using PSBTs can’t. These include making easily adjustable offers directly on any Bitcoin NFT, highly functional smart-contract-based English auctions (with a reserve price) placing bids via authorizations and extending auctions if new bids are received in the final minutes, and helping creators release “reserved Ordinals” that can be sold now and inscribed by users at a later date with lower fees.

No major platform or marketplace has been developed yet dedicated to supporting the Bitcoin ordinals market on a separate Layer-1 without gas or network fees that can scale. Leveraging Bitcoin and PSBTs alone for marketplaces and DEX’s makes trading and transferring ordinals slow and expensive. While the new Ordinals movement will bring more utility to the BTC network, it also brings congestion and higher network fees. To solve these issues, we’ve designed Bioniq from the ground up as the fastest and easiest-to-use Bitcoin Ordinals marketplace, making the whole process as convenient, user-friendly, and secure as possible.

Bioniq Co-founder and CEO Bob Bodily.

In the future, the platform plans to expand its list of available services by introducing “Launchpad” which allows releasing reserved Ordinals, or tokens on ICP with the exclusive right to inscribe on BTC, “Earn,” which allows people to use Ordinals as collateral to borrow crypto; “Super offers,” which enable placing offers on any inscription on Bitcoin and notifying the recipient; and “Collection offers” to make an offer on any Ordinal in an entire collection.

To use Bioniq, users simply transfer their BTC and Ordinals to their Bioniq marketplace wallet. Users can then wrap these assets by sending them to a BTC address generated by a smart contract. Wrapping an Ordinal results in an ICP NFT that includes all of the details from the original Bitcoin NFT, such as inscription data, metadata, and content, which can then be traded on the Bioniq market.