By now, you would most likely have heard of the craze surrounding NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens). The potential that NFTs entail and how so many have already made their money through NFTs. To get started with NTFs, there is no need for any hard programming or coding knowledge. All you need is a growing interest in NFTs and the right tools, and you are good to go!
What’s with the craze about NFTs?
NFTs became hugely popular particularly from 2020. You would have read the headlines of how certain NFT artwork was sold for millions of dollars and wonder how you can do the same. The names like CryptoPunks, Pudgy Penguins and Bored Ape Yacht Club might ring a bell or two. 电竞go比赛手机版v5.9 IOS版(电竞go下注手游)n graffiti artists like Katun and other artists too have had their success selling their NFTs too. So, does it mean you can enjoy the same benefits? What you want to do is to ‘mint’ an NFT, which actually means create (much like minting a cryptocurrency with a different method).
Getting started with minting
There are certain preparatory steps to take note of before starting. Starting with OpenSea, you will need to:
Get a crypto account
The first thing you need to do is to have a crypto exchange account. Names like Coinbase or Binance would be familiar as they are among the most popular crypto exchanges. These are the platforms where you can buy and sell cryptocurrencies and that is what you need to make payments when you mint NFTs. The most popular crypto used for NFTs is ETH or Ethereum, hence it is imperative that you have an account that supports this crypto.
Next, buy ETH
This will be the currency you need to trade. Before you mint any NFTs, you would need to have some value in your account. The biggest exchange out there is OpenSea which constitutes more than 95% of all the NFTs traded. They use ETH, so you have to follow suit. You will need to have an active account in OpenSea to mint NFTs. This is where you need to pay for the fees and they only accept ETH.
How much should you start with?
This depends. Since the price of ETH changes (and can be quite volatile), it could be as low as US$20 or can be as high up as US$400. You need to pay an Initialization fee which is a one-time fee paid to sign up.
- And then, there’s gas price. This is the fee that is chargeable for transactions. Its like a brokerage fee but the price differs depending on the market.
- You will need to have a crypto wallet to trade in OpenSea. The most popular crypto wallet out there is MetaMask while there are many others too. What makes MetaMask so popular is that it works very well with browsers like Chrome. All you need to do is download the app and install it.
- After you set up your MetaMask wallet, you can then send Ethereum to your crypto wallet.
- Take note of your Ethereum public address because this is the link that will allow you to buy and sell.
Now to create your NFT
- You can mint 1 NFT or multiple NFTs in a collection. The process is simple.
- You can upload a file (check the supported formats). Ensure that your NFT has a name.
- Details are not mandatory although it would be good to have them.
- Once you have uploaded the NFT, you can ‘create’.
- Now, the NFT is created but it is still not listed until you click on ‘Sell’.
- Choose between a fixed price or auction. For fixed price NFTs, the gas fee is paid by the buyer. OpenSea charges 2.5% in commission for every NFT sold on its platform.
- After that, you can click on ‘Complete Listing’.
You will then be prompted to agree on a few things via your MetaMask account. If you are a first-timer, your wallet must be initialized. A gas fee will be calculated for you and once you confirm, the process completes (usually in a few minutes). From here, you will be asked to confirm the price for sale and once that is done, your first NFT has been successfully minted and listed on OpenSea.
