How to Get Started with NFTs

A New Age of Digital Ownership

NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens, are tokens that represent authentic ownership of unique assets on a blockchain (an open, permissionless, and immutable ledger). They gained popularity in 2017 with CryptoKitties on Ethereum and have since kicked off Web3’s current cultural bull run.

What’s fascinating about NFTs is that they’re like a digital certificate of authenticity. Thanks to the immutability of blockchains, creators can now assert credible digital ownership over their work while leaving them in the public domain for everyone to enjoy. This wasn’t previously possible in the “right-click, save” Web2 world.

On top of that, NFTs are programmable, tradable, and what I like to call DIY media legos. NFTs represent the future of digital content, and in this blog post, you will learn how to create your own NFT, how to buy your first NFT, and where NFTs are headed next.

NFTs Empower Artistic Creators

NFTs empower creators with a new monetization model and give consumers a new way to support, own, and share in the upside of their favourite projects. They have already exploded in the world of visual art, but there are creators across many disciplines who stand to benefit from digital ownership – musicians, writers, designers, and more.

NFTs, in their current form, offer a direct line of value exchange between creator and fan, opening up new paths to self-sufficiency for artists. Instead of relying on intermediaries who extract massive amounts of value, creators can now sell their authentic and provably scarce work directly to their most devoted fans and capture all the value they create.

To illustrate, traditional rent-seeking streaming platforms like Spotify pay around $3,700 per million streams. Music NFTs on Sound, on the other hand, sell for thousands of dollars while automating secondary royalties to the musician. While more NFT platforms are taking off in crazy ways that no one could anticipate, such as Mirror for writers, much of the potential for NFTs remains untapped.

How to Create Your Own NFT

Before you get started, you’ll need to have some Ether set aside to cover gas costs for minting NFTs; minting is how your digital work becomes a part of a blockchain. You’ll also want to have a browser wallet like MetaMask or Coinbase Wallet so you can directly interact with NFT marketplaces’ smart contracts. Once you have your cryptocurrency and wallet ready, you’re ready to go:

• OpenSea (beginner option): OpenSea lets creators mint NFTs via lazy minting, which means you can list NFTs for free, and this is the option I personally chose to mint my first NFT.

1. Go to OpenSea and connect your wallet.

2. Click on the “Create” button.

3. Upload your JPG, PNG, MP3, etc. and fill out the details to wrap up.

• Zora (intermediate option): Zora is an NFT marketplace protocol that lets users create and control their own NFT storefronts for their work.

1. Go to Zora and connect your wallet.

2. Click on the plus-sign symbol at the top right corner and select “Mint new NFT.”

3. Upload your JPG, PNG, MP3, etc., fill out the details, select your royalty percentage, and click on “Finalize and Publish.”

• Manifold Studio (advanced option): Manifold Studio lets artists deploy their own Manifold Creator contracts for releasing NFTs, and it offers powerful functionalities, like support for dynamic NFTs, airdrops, on-chain royalties, and more.

1. Go to Manifold Studio and connect your wallet.

2. Click on the “Start New Contract” button.

3. Set up your smart contract’s details, which will entail deploying it to the Rinkeby testnet first, and then on the Ethereum mainnet.

How to Buy Your First NFT

Imagine being able to support and bet on your favourite artist early in their career. With NFTs, this is now possible. My friend Eshan wrote a newsletter article about his personal NFT collecting strategy that I recommend, but of course, there’s not necessarily a right or wrong way to collect NFTs. The safest approach is to find artists you want to support and buy NFTs you like and wouldn’t mind holding for years. For example, I recently acquired a piece of The Art of Seasons by Dirty Robot that I plan on printing out and hanging in my apartment.

That said, if you’re new to the NFT ecosystem and don’t know where to start, here are some good platforms to buy your first NFTs:

• OpenSea and Rarible: OpenSea and Rarible are general NFT marketplaces that let users easily shop for a wide array of NFTs.

• SuperRare and Foundation: SuperRare and Foundation are curated NFT marketplaces that specifically center around high-end visual art NFTs.

• Gem: Gem is an NFT marketplace aggregator that allows users to scan the market and buy NFTs at the lowest prices.

If you’re looking specifically for music NFTs:

• Catalog: Catalog is a marketplace for musicians to release one-of-a-kind collector’s items.

• Sound: Sound is a marketplace for musicians to offer limited-time drops and different editions of their music.

• Beat Foundry: Beat Foundry is a platform for musicians to create on-chain generative music.

NFTS Are What We Make Of Them

There’s often debate in the mainstream as to whether or not NFTs can constitute art. My answer is, of course, they can. NFTs are simply a novel programmable medium made for digital artists in the 21st-century.

There’s currently a $50 billion global market for traditional art created with mediums like canvas or marble. Before NFTs, digital artists couldn’t participate in that market because there was no easy way to authenticate original digital art created with mediums like Adobe Photoshop or Cinema 4D. For the first time through NFTs, digital artists now have a native medium to showcase and gain recognition for their digital art. The 6529 Museum District is a fun glimpse into the future, and I encourage you to go visit sometime.

So yes, NFTs can be art. But they can also be many other things, like music (to bypass streaming platforms), profile-pic-projects (to build a brand from the bottom up), games (to give players ownership of their in-game items), virtual worlds (to represent ownership of metaverse land), tickets (to gain access to experiences), and more. This is why creators from so many other walks of life are embracing NFTs. The NFT ecosystem remains very young; I expect that in the next few years, NFT categories beyond visual art will see sustained growth, and by the end of this decade, NFTs will become even larger than crypto.