How Does an NFT Mint Work

The concept of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has been around since 2014, but since 2020, it has made an immense breakthrough and grabbed headlines around the world. While DeFI has brought capital into the crypto market, NFTs have brought people lucrative games, puzzling artwork, and even some practical use cases. Therefore, they are regarded as the new frontier of revenue generation, especially for the artists involved. 

Creators and artists who create NFTs get access to global markets. Even small NFT creators can enjoy this benefit. They can sell their art to global audiences. Many artists don’t have access to exhibitions or galleries, and by digitizing their artwork, they can sell it worldwide.  Moreover, selling on a global level is very easy as they can sell their artwork on platforms such as OpenSea, an online NFT marketplace, and other such platforms in a hassle-free manner. 

With minting NFT, the artist’s art is secure and stored over blockchain networks; it also earns a certain amount of royalty on all future sales. 

So, if you are an artist or an NFT enthusiast planning to mint your NFTs and wondering how an NFT mint works, we have just the right guide for you. First, let’s understand what minting an NFT even means. 

What Does Minting an NFT Mean?

When an artist or a creator publishes a one-of-a-kind digital asset on an NFT marketplace for the purpose of selling it, it is termed “minting an NFT”. These tokens usually involve converting images, sound bites, videos, or other digital files into crypto assets on a blockchain. NFTs cannot be substituted, copied, or subdivided. To make sure that NFTs remain unique, their metadata codes are stored on a blockchain so that they cannot be altered in any way. 

Basically, when you mint an NFT, you work with the underlying smart contract code, which ultimately defines the quality of the NFT. In the recent past, numerous standards have been established for smart contracts to make sure NFTs can interact with applications. One such standard is ERC-721. According to this standard, a token on this smart contract is unique and can have different values created from the same smart contract. 

Ethereum’s ERC-721 standard is the most commonly used, and a lot of artists have used this standard to launch their NFTs. For an NFT to be created from the ERC-721 contract, it must have unique token IDs, a requirement other standards don’t have. 

Prerequisites for NFT Minting

Before you start minting NFTs there are certain things you have to do:

1. The first thing you need to do is buy Ethereum. It is one of the most popular cryptocurrencies and almost every crypto exchange supports it. In fact, many NFT marketplaces offer transaction services using ETH. Visit any crypto exchange of your choice, create an account, complete the KYC process, deposit funds in the account, and buy ETH. 

2. The next step is to create a crypto wallet to store your coins as well as your NFTs. You’d also need to buy or sell NFTs on OpenSea. One of the best wallets to use with OpenSea is MetaMask. After installing it, you can store your ETH in it. 

3. The last thing is to connect your wallet to OpenSea. This is how:

• Open your browser and click on the MetaMask extension to log in. 
• Go to OpenSea’s official website and click on “Profile”
• Now, you will be prompted to connect your wallet. Click on MetaMask.
• Agree to the terms and conditions 
• Provide your email and username 
• You’ll receive a link in your inbox for verification purposes. 
• Click on the link to verify your account  

How Does an NFT Mint Work on OpenSea?

Once the steps from above have been followed, you can now mint your first NFT with OpenSea. The best way to mint an NFT is to create a collection with various shapes, colors, and other customized options. Here’s how you do it:

• On your OpenSea profile, click on “My Collections”
• Click on “Create” to start a new collection. 

After creating your NFT collection, follow these steps to add NFTs to it: 

• Open the collection that you created 
• Click on “Add New Item”
• Upload the NFT and name it
• Fill in all the required details

How Does an NFT Mint Work on Rarible?

The process here is quite similar to OpenSea. Rarible is also about to launch a new feature called “Lazy Minting,” which makes it easy for creators and artists to mint NFTs. To mint with Rarible, follow the steps below:

• Go to the official website of Rarible 
• Connect your wallet 
• Click on “Create” and enter all the information about the NFT you are about to mint
• Select the “Free Minting” option
• Click on “Create Item” and sign free authorization with your wallet

And you are done. After this, whenever someone purchases your NFT, it will be minted to your wallet and then automatically transferred to the new owner. Simple! 

How Does an NFT Mint Work on SuperRare?

Minting on SuperRare is not as easy as creating an NFT and uploading the JPEG on the marketplace. SuperRare is very selective when it comes to minting NFTs on the platform. 

To sell NFTs on the SuperRare platform, you have to submit an official application and stick to the site’s standards regarding scarcity and quality. You can submit your art via SuperRare’s official Google Form if you think your art meets the standards. Applicants have to submit a one-minute video introduction and three of their best artworks in a Google Drive folder. 

SuperRare doesn’t respond to applicants who are not selected. So, make sure that you submit the original artwork that has not been minted on other NFT marketplaces. One benefit of this harsh screening process is that if the artwork is selected, it is high quality and unique and gives the artist a lot of rapport in the NFT community. 

According to NFT’s smart contract, artists get a 10 percent royalty for every secondary sale on the SuperRare platform. Even if you are not an artist and don’t want to create an NFT, you can still become a part of the SuperRare community by holding RARE tokens. 

Final Thoughts  

Minting NFTs is a profitable venture and can help you make money. However, always beware of the  tokenization of your art into an NFT without your permission. Nonetheless, NFTs is a growing space and in this guide, we mentioned how an NFT mint works on different marketplaces. 

How Does an NFT Mint Work FAQs