NFTs whether you like it or hate it, comes with many use cases.
Yes, a lot of celebrities jumped on this NFT bandwagon, with most of them just being cash grabs. There are still lot of scams happening in this space, by many anonymous people.
But NFTs have represented a wide variety of use cases in various industries. They can do amazing stuff when you attached some amazing utilities.
And creating these cute JPEGs or Mp3 files comes with a cost. That process of creating is called Minting, and the cost is Gas Fee.
And in this article, I will give you all the details you need to know before you mint your NFTs (or anybody’s NFTs).
Minting is the process of converting your art into a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) by putting it on the blockchain.
So, an Ethereum NFT collection like CryptoPunks is a collection of art pieces that are minted on the Ethereum Blockchain.
Similarly, NBA Top Shots are minted on the Flow Blockchain.
Ok, how does minting work?
First of all, you need to understand that NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are digital tokens that represent ownership of a specific item or piece of content, such as artwork, music, videos, virtual real estate, or even tweets.
The minting process is what establishes the authenticity, ownership, and provenance of an NFT.
When an NFT is minted, a smart contract is deployed on a blockchain network, such as Ethereum or Binance Smart Chain, which contains all the relevant information about the digital asset, including its creator, metadata, and any associated royalties or terms of use.
Creators can mint NFTs of their original digital content, allowing them to tokenize their work and sell it as a unique digital collectible or asset.
You can find the NFTs (to be minted) on an artists (or whoever is releasing them) website or on a marketplace like OpenSea that has mint functionalities.
Collectors, on the other hand, can purchase these NFTs to own (of course, by minting – if they aren’t even minted in the first place) and trade digital items in a transparent and secure manner.
From a collector (or buyer) perspective, for you to resell the NFT, you need to have it in your own wallet.
And for the NFT to be in your wallet, you either had to buy from someone, or have to mint it (see above image) for you to receive your NFT in your wallet.
From a creator (or seller) perspective, setting up the NFTs ready to be minted typically involves several steps, including selecting a platform or marketplace, uploading the digital asset, configuring metadata and attributes.
Once minted, NFTs can be bought, sold, and traded on various NFT marketplaces, where they are displayed and discovered by collectors and enthusiasts.
So, you already have some artworks that you have created, and you want to make those into an NFT and list it for selling. How do you do that?
Before going into that, let’s look at some requirements you need before you go mint something.
Ok, let’s look at the minting process.
Now, all you need to do is go to an NFT marketplace like OpenSea or Rarible and connect your wallet. Once you find the option to create a collection, it’s very self explainatory from there.
NFT minting makes it easy for creators to sell their digital work and for collectors to buy and trade unique digital items.
This process opens up ownership and earning opportunities for creators while giving collectors new ways to enjoy digital content.
It’s a key part of the growing NFT world, spurring creativity and innovation in digital markets.
Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Flow, and Cardano are probably the top 5 blockchains out there for NFT development.
Each blockchain has their own advantages and disadvantages.
For example, Fee is a big +ve for Polygon (which is Ethereum L2 solution), but it’s a -ve for Ethereum, as most of the times users end up paying high gas fee for transactions.
Lazy minting is an amazing option and the only way to avoid paying gas fee.
Instead of you as a seller minting on the blockchain, you keep your assets ready for mint on a platform like OpenSea, and once the seller is interested to mint it, he or she will be paying the gas fee.
If nobody likes it, it won’t be minted. But yeah, you have no risk of paying high gas fee and in the end, nobody bought it.