The NFT gold rush is reminiscent of the several booms that came before it: altcoins, initial coin offerings, and decentralized finance (DeFi). Non-fungible tokens are all the rage as content creators race to mint their own NFTs and sell them for hundreds of thousands, if not millions. A digital artist known as Beeple sold a JPG file for $69 million while Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sold a tweet as an NFT for nearly $3 million. Sophia the robot created and sold an NFT artwork for nearly $700,000.
Interestingly though, buying an NTF doesn’t give you ownership of the artwork itself. You are rather buying metadata that proves that you are the owner of the NFT artwork, and an opportunity to sell it in the future for profit if you want.
NFTs can be minted on several blockchains that support the non-fungible token standard.
Blockchains for creating NFTs
It is important to note that NFTs extend beyond digital art and paintings. They can be used to represent anything such as collectibles, virtual land, music, video footage of moments worth capturing, tweets, artwork, tokenized real-world assets, and more.
These NFTs can be minted on blockchains that include:
- Ethereum
- Binance Smart Chain
- Tron
- EOS
- Tezos
- Cosmos
- Polkadot
- WAX
- Flow by Dapper Labs
The different blockchains have their own NFT token standard as well as compatible marketplaces and wallets. An NFT created on Tron can only be bought and sold on marketplaces that support Tron assets. Despite the numerous blockchain choices, Ethereum is the leading distributed ledger used to create and sell NFTs.
How to Mint NFTs on the Ethereum Blockchain
Anyone can create and sell NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. You need to follow these steps:
- Make sure that you have an Etherum wallet that supports the non-fungible token (ERC721) standard. These include Coinbase Wallet, Metamask, or Trust Wallet.
- You need to have anywhere between $50 — $100 in Ether. If you have ERC20 tokens, you need to convert them to Ether. Do the same for fiat currencies or crypto assets you may have.
- Choose a marketplace that allows you to connect your wallet and upload your file that you want to turn into an NFT.
- The marketplaces to choose from include:
- The marketplaces to choose from include:
- OpenSea — a very popular platform
- Rarible
- Mintable
- Makersplace
- Create your account in your favored NFT marketplace
- Upload your file
- Add a title and description to your artwork
- Confirm the details and get ready to mint your NFT
- Sign your NFT — you are basically linking your NFT to your Ethereum wallet address
- Approve the gas fee and wait for the NFT to be created.
- View your minted NFT on your marketplace dashboard.
You can now list your newly minted NFT for sale or auction at your favorite platform. The NFT artworks are unique and their prices won’t be the same. However, the beauty of it is that anyone can create and sell NFTs. The NFT created on an Ethereum will be sold in Ether. It is up to you to keep the proceeds as is or convert them to ERC20 tokens such as the social token LEDU.
Who Should Create NFTs?
There is no limit to who can create NFTs. You can mint artwork, video files, or even tweets as NFTs. The humanoid robot Sophia created an artwork, minted it as an NFT, and sold it for $688K. However, not everyone will make millions from selling NFTs. This is because well-known artists or celebrities have an edge over ordinary people. Famous people have so far benefited from the NFT mania, and ordinary people are starting to catch up too.
Final Thoughts
The reboot of the NFT mania has helped to get many content creators in the crypto space and at the same time, allowed them to monetize their creativity. There are arguments that NFTs are in a bubble due to the insane amounts of money paid for tweets and JPG files that are found in the public domain. What is clear is that the NFT market is just getting started, and its future could be brighter, or bleak.
Do you think NFTs are the future of digital art or this is just another passing phase? Let us know in the comments below.
NFTs are in the early phase, all the wildness will bread a new version of NFTs in years to come that actually have value
I’m new to NFT but not to crypto, I’d like some help on how to think or perceive the variety of lens on the authenticity of physical goods with NFT, or if that’s even a viable use of NFT’s
How do you keep a physical collectible authentic with its associated NFT. For example, what if I saw a collectible items ‘watermarked’ with its NFT, I liked it so much that I went home and literally made a copy of it. It’s so similar that unless a person had been sitting down with both versions for a few hours you wouldn’t be able to say which one was the first and real one.
Then i went on an NFT minting site and registered my copy with its own NFT.
Technically now there are two of these collectible items with their own NFT. In that way they are different because they have their own NFT to identify each other, but the physical items aren’t unique in its idea and conception.
Or is that out of the realm of NFT and proving authenticity? As in, now there are just two instances of a similar collectible item that are separated by their NFT identity?
I suppose it’s just something I haven’t really absorbed and realized the intrinsic value of owning a particular NFT versus owning a collectible that happens to have its own NFT. Like I’m not able to associate value with owning a specific NFT, I’m associating the value of the collectible that the NFT is attached with.
Anyways I’m not knocking on NFTs, I am very interested in them and want to learn and understand everything about them! Thanks for any help/advice/suggestions
Hi, I’ll just try to answer based on my understanding:
Your question: I made a copy of a physical collectible that is near identical to the original however, the authenticity can be verified on the blockchain because the collectible is an NFT. If the physical versions are identical, what makes it unique? (I hope I captured the question correctly)
Answer: The blockchain entry is what makes it unique not the physical item. A Mona Lisa painting has got so many copies that would require an individual with serious skill set in discerning the paintings to figure out which is authentic. If they had blockchain technology at the time it was created, the authenticity would have been on an open ledger and there would be no confusion or corruption about this.
If you have two entries of the same item, then I am guessing the one to log in the item first gets to own the rights to the collectible. Take Sir Isaac Newton for example, in many circles it is believed that people had discovered the law of gravity long before him. However, Sir Isaac Newton was the first to publish it comprehensively enough to make it his own discovery.
In a nutshell, this is not a new idea however, the blockchain technology or NFT platforms makes achieving a bunch of things not just easier but accessible. Of course you probably know of the Mintables and the Raribles, personally I like ethernity because it isn’t just a platform for minting NFTs. It has what it dubs as ANFT Authentic Non Fungible Tokens which adds further an extra layer for Authenticity.
Hope this largely answers your question 🙂
Yup, my exact thought, NFTs are a great idea but some sort of curation needs to be implemented by the market, to allow art pieces increase their value over time, and not reduce it due to the multiplication of a single image from an original painting (for example). Otherwise is like selling my photographs on istockphoto…. isn’t it?? what do you think ARTISTS? ( Im an artist and a software engineer)
TBH, I still can’t understand why people buy NFT’s….
I mean as confusing as it is, the fact you can prove it’s the “nft” version through the block chain is actually a really clever way to create digital originals which that side of art has always been missing literally forever. I know there’s no difference between a copy on my computer vs the nft other than that but it’s the closest digital artist will get to being able to sell original 1 of 1s
Can someone explain NFTs and why would you pay for it? I’m a simple man I need simple words.
think of it like a digital trading card. For more expensive ones there’s usually only one, for some there’s multiple, but it’s essentially like a trading card in that there’s no real value in having it, but people just like to be “the one that owns that thing”.
NFTs are the next big thing after DeFi.
We have seen that after many 1,000% price increases that DeFi has stagnated for more than a month now and after making a lot of money crypto investors are hungry for the next 1,000% trend.
I have been watching to see if NFT are that next big thing and I can say that now they are. It’s not me claiming that, the market has already proving it with the world’s biggest artists (Banky, Beeple) selling the art for $68M(!).
We have now truly entered the age of cyberpunk and society is fully digitized and now the art world is moving into NFTs and it has only started.
Compared to cryptocurrencies, NFTs are not investment-grade assets and more like digital collectables. And, they are also not a liquid investment, meaning, you will find it difficult to sell one.
Although NFTs are selling like a hot cake in the market, it is still a new concept and as an asset class, it should prove its efficacy first. Therefore, a beginner in the crypto market should avoid and if you are considering buying one, you should first understand the risks well.
The thing about NFTs is that they don’t just have to be digital art. NFTs have a ton of different uses, and innovative people will create more and more uses for them as time goes on. One of the main applications right now is definitely ART and blockchain gaming, but as I previously mentioned there will probably be more uses for NFTs in the future. One of my favorites is definitely gaming, as it creates a ton of opportunities for people to play games and earn money as well.
Like all assets, supply and demand are the key market drivers for price. thanks to the scarce nature of NFTs and therefore the high demand for them from gamers, collectors and investors, people are often prepared to pay tons of cash for them.
Some NFTs even have the potential to form their owners tons of cash . as an example , one gamer on the Decentraland virtual land platform decided to get 64 lots and mix them into one estate. Dubbed “The Secrets of Satoshis garden ,” it sold for $80,000 purely due to its desirable location and road access. Another investor parted with $222,000 to get a segment of a digital Monaco racing track within the F1 Delta Time game. The NFT representing the piece of digital track allows the owner to receive 5% dividends from all races that happen thereon , including entry ticket fees.