Non-fungible token (NFT) assets have taken the world by storm, as popular NFT artists are making millions from their blockchain-backed designs, music, and collectibles. As the trend continues to become more popular by the day, swarms of people are wondering how they can create their own non-fungible token and sell it after minting the NFT. The following article is a comprehensive list of tools that can help anyone get started minting NFTs and then selling them on an open marketplace.
NFT Hype Swells to New Levels
You’ve probably heard the term “non-fungible token” or “NFT” by now, because it’s the hottest trend in the blockchain space at the moment. Artists, celebrities, musicians, and professional athletes are making millions selling these blockchain assets on the internet.
Basically, an NFT is a non-fungible token that cannot be divided like crypto-assets such as bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH), which are fractional by a number of decimals. An NFT is a single asset, that is very unique and not like any other tokens in existence, unless the individual mints a number of copies of the same NFT for a collection.
In the early days, bitcoin (BTC) transactions were used to create colored coins, which are basically the very first versions of NFTs. All NFTs are tied to some kind of metadata, which could be a picture, document, comic book, animated GIF, and even real-world assets if the creator has designed a way to tether the digital world to the real world. A long time ago, Bitcoin.com reported on Rare Pepe trading cards that leveraged the Counterparty blockchain to mint NFTs and following that project came Curio Cards, digital trading cards built on the Ethereum blockchain.
Since then and especially in 2020 and into 2021, NFTs have exploded in demand and popular projects like Sorare, Cryptopunks, NBA Top Shots, Makersplace, Art Blocks, Rarible, Opensea, Hashmasks, Decentraland, and more have seen massive interest.
The NFT artist known as “Beeple” has relentlessly made money in the game by steadily becoming one of the most popular NFT artists in the space. Beeple also stole the show last week, when his NFT art sold for $69 million at the world-famous auction house Christie’s. Beeple’s NFT was the fourth-highest valued piece of art sold in 2021, outpacing auctions for artwork created by world-renowned artists such as Picasso and Lichtenstein.
Blockchains That Can Issue Non-Fungible Token Assets
Ethereum is the most popular crypto blockchain available to create NFTs. However, there are a number of alternative blockchains that can mint NFTs as well. As mentioned above, NFTs technically can be crafted on the BTC chain, but transaction fees have pushed BTC to the wayside when it comes to any type of tokenization concept.
Besides Ethereum, interested NFT designers can leverage blockchains such as Cardano, Polkadot, Bitcoin Cash, Binance Smart Chain, EOS, Tron, Flow, WAX, Tezos, Cosmos, and more. Bitcoin.com recently published a guide on how to craft NFTs on the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) chain and sell them in a decentralized fashion.
Every one of these blockchains has differences and a host of compatible applications that work with the NFTs. Other blockchains have varying transaction fees as well, as the cost to mint an NFT can vary depending on the network used.
For instance, leveraging a smart contract on Ethereum and using the ERC721 token standard, can cost anywhere between $40 to $100 per NFT creation to mint tokens. On the other hand, a network like Bitcoin Cash (BCH) will cost only $0.003 per NFT creation to mint Simple Ledger Protocol (SLP)-based tokens.
The thing is, Ethereum has a much larger NFT environment than the likes of BCH and the other blockchains that can mint NFTs. By leveraging Ethereum, the transaction fees will cost more than the other networks, but there are far more marketplaces and compatible wallets that work with the ETH-based NFT ecosystem. This includes artist incubators, luxury art galleries, and markets like notfungible.com, Makersplace, Nifty Gateway, Opensea, Rarible, and more.
The aforementioned guide about BCH-based SLPs describes only a few places where creators can sell their SLP-fueled NFTs. Creators should outweigh the benefits of each blockchain before deciding on which network to leverage. Other blockchains also have minimal applications and wallets that support NFTs. Just recently, Tron fans were introduced to a secondary NFT market hosted on the metaverse called Megacryptopolis.
EOS proponents can leverage things like Atomic Assets, and the Itam Store. People can also use the Worldwide Asset Exchange (WAX), a purpose-built blockchain and protocol designed specifically for tokens and NFTs. Fans of BNB, can leverage Binance Smart Chain applications to mint and sell smart chain-based NFTs.
Ethereum-based Applications That Can Mint Non-Fungible Tokens and Crafting a ERC721 by Scratch
So now that you know there’s a bunch of blockchains that can mint NFTs, and developing an NFT on a blockchain can be difficult. You can leverage any one of the aforementioned blockchains to issue an NFT by coding it all from scratch. There’s plenty of documentation on how to create NFTs in this manner, but it is focused more on tech-savvy individuals.
After the NFT ecosystem started to grow on the Ethereum chain, however, there’s a myriad of applications that can help a person mint an NFT with little to no knowledge concerning blockchain coding.
Interested NFT creators can leverage the apps Opensea, Makersplace, Rarible, and Mintable. All of these applications use Ethereum and Makersplace requires a registration, as verified and listed artist to create NFTs.
Bitcoin.com also wrote a step-by-step guide on how to leverage the Rarible platform to mint and list an NFT for sale in less than 15 minutes. Some token-creation platforms will create tokens based on the ERC1155 standard for NFT collections.
For the tech-savvy blockchain experts who want to leverage tools like Ethereum’s programming language Solidity, they can follow this guide Bitcoin.com drafted in 2018. Alisya Kainth also wrote an excellent step-by-step walkthrough for people interested in creating ERC721 (NFT) tokens. Furthermore, the author Merlin Christina has written a well written guide for startups interested in creating and deploying non-fungible tokens (NFTs) via the Ethereum blockchain.
Every single day people are learning about NFTs as the trend has grown a great deal and there’s a whole lot of NFT infrastructure out there for proponents to test and create. Data shows that there were 19,869 non-fungible token sales during the last seven days which saw $35 million in sales. Out of the close to 20k worth of NFTs sold, the average NFT sold for $1,774 per unit.
But just because you can craft an NFT in a matter of minutes it doesn’t mean you will make millions like popular NFT artists such as Beeple. Because the NFT ecosystem has swelled in popularity, the competition has grown a great deal as well.
What do you think about creating a non-fungible token (NFT) asset? Does the NFT popularity excite you? Let us know what you think about the NFT ecosystem in the comments section below.
Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons
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