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Most people have interacted with the internet only through Web 2.0, where social media platforms, online applications and software as a service have become a core part of modern life.
Web 3.0 is being championed as the internet’s next phase — a third iteration, built on the blockchain, that gives users more control over content. With just one account, users can move seamlessly between platforms, shop, browse for information, browse entertainment, and more.
Biconomy (BICO) is a project that wants to make Web 3.0 — or Web3 — a reality by providing developers with the building blocks and interface for creating Web3 apps. In this guide, we’re going to cover how Biconomy works, what BICO tokens are, what they’re used for, and whether or not this project is a good investment.
Biconomy (BICO) is a multi-chain, plug-and-play relayer protocol that can handle transaction management, gas payments and bridges for Web 3.0 applications. The infrastructure is noncustodial, which means users don’t have to worry about network switching when conducting transactions.
Many Web 3.0 apps continue to be built on Ethereum; however, all of this traffic has caused the Ethereum blockchain to become congested, significantly raising gas prices and forcing developers to look for alternative chains for their applications (such as Solana, Polkadot, Cardano, Binance Smart Chain, and others). It’s clear that Web3 is going to be a multi-chain reality, and secure bridging solutions will be necessary to help users move funds between various chains.
In traditional app development, software development kits (SDKs) and application programming interfaces (APIs) are the two principal tools for developing app functionality. An SDK provides the tools for building an app for a specific platform, while an API facilitates communication between two platforms and makes efficient integration between apps possible.
Biconomy offers developers powerful and easy-to-use SDKs/APIs which enable them to build decentralized apps (DApps) with a customized transaction journey — so that end users don’t have to deal with the complexities of the blockchain. This enables developers to create seamless interactions between users and DApps.
The goal of Biconomy is to make Web3 products as intuitive and easy to use as legacy Web2 products by simplifying the transaction experience. By solving key pain points at the crypto transaction layer, Biconomy hopes to simplify Web3 experiences and help drive mass adoption of decentralized projects.
Numerous developers are already leveraging Biconomy and its multi-chain stack to offer a seamless experience to users of products in decentralized finance (DeFi), NFTs, gaming, and more. Biconomy provides them with:
Biconomy uses “executors” and “validators” to manage its relayer infrastructure. Executors run relayer nodes and handle meta-transactions, while validators secure the network by verifying the executor’s transactions.
Executors relay transactions they receive and pay the required gas fees to add the transaction to the blockchain. They are reimbursed for what they pay using the destination blockchain’s native currency, and they also receive a premium fee from every transaction. Once the relayed transaction is verified by validators, executors also receive a reward in BICO tokens from Biconomy.
BICO is the native token of the Biconomy infrastructure, used for network fees, network governance, and incentives for network participants. It’s an ERC20 token minted on Ethereum. The total supply of BICO is capped at 1 billion tokens. As of December 2021, the circulating supply was 65.3 million BICO, or approximately 6.5% of the total supply.
Image source: Biconomy.io
BICO tokens can be used for the following:
BICO tokens have a release schedule (pictured above and detailed below) designed to align with the long-term vision of Biconomy’s investors and team.
Mexa
With Mexa, developers can use either a custom transaction implementation or EIP-2771 standard implementation to allow gasless transactions for DApps. With the custom implementation, Biconomy provides smart contracts that developers can use to inherit the gasless transaction functionality. With the EIP-2771 implementation, rather than directly integrating Biconomy’s transaction validation logic into their contracts, developers can instead accept validated calls from a trusted forwarder that complies with EIP-2771.
To enable gasless transactions, developers must first deposit native tokens in what Biconomy is calling the “DApp gas tank.” Every DApp has a gas tank module which ensures Biconomy relayers have enough gas to pay for the transaction fees, and that the transaction fees are relayed smoothly.
Forward
This system gives users flexibility when paying for gas fees by supporting a variety of tokens, such as DAI, USDC and USDT. Forward is designed to work with any app on Ethereum, particularly DeFi protocols where fees are impractical for teams to cover for their users, or when users may not have the ETH funds to pay for gas.
Hyphen
This solution allows faster and less expensive token transfers between different blockchains. It’s a potential solution to the problem of transferring funds from Ethereum and L2 blockchains like Polygon. The product’s mainnet was launched in August 2021. To start, Hyphen will support instant transfers of USDC and USDT between Ethereum and Polygon.
According to the Biconomy team, the average time of transfer between the two chains using Hyphen is 30 to 40 seconds! It’s also a much cheaper option, costing up to 50% less than native bridge transfers.
Hyphen was launched with support for USDT and USDC, but the Biconomy team plans to add support for several more tokens. They also plan to enable near-instant transfers between more L2s and sidechains in the coming months.
According to Biconomy’s rewind for 2021, the network has already successfully relayed over 12.9 million gasless transactions, which represent $1.05 billion in processed volume. More than 90 DApps have integrated Biconomy’s gasless service, including Decentraland, Aavegotchi, EthSign, Perpetual and Showtime.
Biconomy is far from the only project capitalizing on the growing popularity of Web3 applications, but it has managed to capture its own corner of the market.
BICO was launched in Q4 2021, and its value immediately shot to an all-time high of $21.87 at the start of December. It didn’t maintain that upward trajectory, and its value retraced after the initial hype died down. But that doesn’t mean the Biconomy team hasn’t been busy announcing new partnerships and products.
BICO was originally on CoinList, but has since been listed on numerous larger exchanges, including Coinbase. It’s trading at bargain prices right now, so this is a great time to invest. Biconomy has scheduled numerous improvements for 2022, including a multi-chain relayer protocol launch, improved gasless features, and new chain integrations including Solana, Fantom and NEON.
$BICO is listed on several exchanges, including Bybit. To purchase BICO on Bybit, follow these simple steps.
Web 3.0 apps are generating a lot of buzz and strong interest, especially on Ethereum. A wide variety of use cases have emerged in the space, but the increasing adoption of DeFi and NFT products has caused congestion on Ethereum’s network.
Biconomy’s plug-and-play APIs have set the stage for a simple, multi-chain experience, gasless transactions and instant cross-chain transfers that hopefully mitigates current blockchain headaches.
To invest in the platform’s future as a Web3 genie, purchase Biconomy’s native token, BICO, via the Bybit crypto trading platform today.