Why this use case matters

Orcpunks is a Mint-and-Earn NFT project on the MultiversX (former Elrond) blockchain. MultiversX was XP.NETWORK’s first partner among major L1 blockchains, and we have since bridged over 4,300 NFTs to and from this network. In particular, Orcpunks have traveled to BNB Chain.

As MultiversX is one of the fastest and most NFT-friendly chains out there, but for some strange reason many blockchain users still don’t know about it. At XP.NETWORK, we feel that it’s part of Olour mission to spread the awareness of such innovative and highly efficient chains – after all, if NFTs are to reach universal adoption, older chains like Ethereum or BNB Chain won’t be able to handle the increased transaction volumes. It will be up to networks optimized for NFTs and gaming, such as MultiversX or SKALE, to support the new global non-fungible ecosystem.

For this reason, every time we help bridge a collection to or from MultiversX, we are making a small step towards that universal NFT market without barriers that is our ultimate goal. It doesn’t matter if the project is big or small, or high high its trading volume is on the destination chain: the important part is that more people become aware of NFT bridging and of the rich ecosystems outside of the usual chains.

About Orcpunks

Orcpunks are essentially pixelated orcs – green, muscular, and often wearing CryptoPunk-style eyeshades. They are a brainchild of a fully doxxed, mostly Czech team. The project was founded in 2022, and the first collection of 2000 Orcpunks were soon minted out on XOXNO, the leading NFT marketplace on MultiversX.

After the original collection, the team released a utility token, $ZOG. This was followed by ZOG staking and swaps: for example, you can swap ZOG for EGLD and WEGLD. There is an NFT staking portal, too, allowing you to earn rewards simply for holding Orcpunks.

On top of this, the project launched two additional NFT collections: SheOrcs, which enabled breeding, EasterOrcs (a surprise Easter-themed set), and OlympOrcs, centered on the sports theme. The roadmap also includes a steampunk game about orcs and even a 3D-printable collection of orcs that can be used in the upcoming game.

There is also a mini-game called ZorgFlip, where you flip a coin while betting EGLD on either heads or tails.

You can also find Orcpunks on other important MultiversX marketplaces: Isengard and Deadrare. Admittedly the level of trading activity for this collection isn’t very high right now, but like we said, what matters to us is Orcpunk’s decision to go cross-chain and use XP.NETWORK for the purpose.

Bridging Orcpunks to BNB Chain and Polygon

Orcpunks implemented the XP.NETWORK bridging widget – the best tool for adding NFT bridging features to the front-end of any dApp or website. It works virtually out of the box: any website admin familiar with CSS will be able to set it up in 10 to 15 minutes.

You can decide which blockchains will be activated in the widget and also how to style it to suit the website’s design. For example, you can make the background transparent.

You can even get rewarded for hosting the bridge on your site: we share part of the fees with projects that integrate the bridge, because we are eager to promote cross-chain adoption.

In this instance, Orcpunks did the right thing by enabling only those chains that actually served their purposes. They are MultiversX, of course, plus Polygon and BNB Chain.

For a project based on a non-EVM chain, it makes a lot of sense to pick BSC and Polygon for its first cross-chain experiment. Both are supported by OpenSea and have huge user bases. In fact, most NFTs minted and sold on OpenSea are actually processed on Polygon, though high-value transactions mostly happen on Ethereum.

Note that users who bridge Orcpunks pay all the fees in the currency of the home chain. So, when sending an Orcpunk from MultiversX to Polygon, you’d pay the whole fee (transactions on both chains plus bridging) in EGLD. In the opposite direction, the fee would be payable in MATIC. This is a major usability advantage of the XP.NETWORK bridge, as users can transfer NFTs even if they have zero balance on the target chain.

Now that we’ve seen the widget implementation, let’s check the actual flow of Orcpunk NFTs through the bridge. The best tool for this is the XP Explorer – the first cross-blockchain explorer for NFTs.

By going through the history of transfers between MulitversX and BNB Chain or Polygon, we find that a few Orcpunks were moved to BSC and remained there: there is a Transfer transaction for each, but no Unfreeze transaction (which is equivalent to sending an NFT back to the original chain).

Here you might think that a handful of Orcs among XP.NETWORK’s more than 13,000 bridging transactions is hardly noticeable. But once again, every bridged collection matters, and in fact, most of those 13,000 transactions are constituted by bridging just a handful items from each collection. With time, though, this steady treacle will become a stream of NFTs flowing through our bridge.