While Ethereum is the number one blockchain for NFTs and Solana has established itself as a solid competitor, Cardano has been making up ground over the past year. For that reason, many people are trying to figure out how to buy Cardano NFTs.

The first NFTs started being minted on Cardano in March 2021, at which time the community of creators and collectors was relatively small, and there was no marketplace on which to trade.

Since then, the NFT ecosystem has expanded a lot, smart contracts have been enabled, and now there are new projects minting all the time, several marketplaces operating, and some collections’ prices have risen significantly.

A big advantage of using Cardano is that, as with Solana, transaction costs on the network are very low, so you don’t need to worry about gas fees.

Here’s how to buy and sell Cardano NFTs.

How to Install a Cardano Wallet

The currency of the Cardano network is ADA, so you’ll need an ADA wallet that can also deal with NFTs. A very popular and easy-to-use choice is Nami. This is a browser extension wallet that will connect up easily with Cardano NFT marketplaces.

To start using Nami, click through from the website, and install it as a browser extension. As always when setting up a new wallet, take care to note down your seed phrase, which you must keep securely in a safe place, and not disclose to anyone.

You’ll then need to get some ADA, which you can buy or exchange on big crypto exchanges including Binance, Coinbase, KuCoin and Kraken. Transfer the ADA to your Nami wallet and you’re almost ready to go.

Just one more step you need to complete is something called adding collateral. This is required to interact with Cardano smart contracts, and it amounts to about 5 ADA, which you can remove anytime you want. In the Nami wallet, you can find the Collateral setting by clicking on the round picture icon at the top right and looking down the menu.

If you want to try some other wallets, there are several alternatives to Nami, including Yoroi, Flint, Daedalus, and CCVault. Of these, Daedalus is a full node wallet. This means you’ll have maximum security and be operating without a third party, but it’s a lot more resource heavy and takes time to install.

How to Buy Cardano NFTs

Currently, the primary marketplace with the most trade is JPG Store. Go to the site and connect up your wallet by clicking the Connect Wallet button at the top right, selecting your wallet, and approving access. Then you can take some time to look around the platform and get an idea of how it compares to other marketplaces.

Hover over the Properties label, just above the NFTs within a collection, to search by attribute. As on other platforms, you can switch to the Activity tab to get a view of sales activity, and there are website and social media links to the right of a collection’s title.

Buying on Cardano is now done by smart contract (as on Ethereum and Solana), so it’s just a matter of clicking on the NFT you want, then clicking on the Buy NFT button, and then there’ll be a pop-up where you can sign off the transaction in your wallet.

After that it can take up to a few minutes for everything to go through, and if it’s a busy time and the network is congested, there could be short delays.

The first ever Cardano NFT marketplace was CNFT.IO, and it’s worth also checking what’s on offer there and comparing prices, and some other active marketplaces are Genesis House and Tokhun.

How to Sell Cardano NFTs

This is a very simple process. When your wallet is connected, you’ll see your ADA balance at the top right of the screen. Click on that and you’ll be taken to your NFT inventory, and below each NFT there’s a Sell NFT button. Click that, set your price, and click the Send listing button. A window will pop up from your wallet where you sign off the transaction, and you’re done.

A listing will stay up until there’s a buyer or you remove the listing, and on JPG Store there are currently no auctions or bidding systems, although that could change in future.

Notable Collections on Cardano

SpaceBudz

One of the earliest NFT collections to be minted on Cardano, it contains 10,000 NFTs, built Cardano’s first smart contract enabled marketplace (on the SpaceBudz site itself), and this collection also achieved Cardano’s first $1 million NFT sale (SpaceBud #9936, in case you were wondering).

Unsigned Algorithms

Another early collection, and considered part of Cardano NFT history. Unsigned Algorithms created 31,119 pieces, each one was algorithmically generated, and they are on-chain NFTs, meaning their art-generating code was minted onto the blockchain.

Clay Nation

A very original and highly regarded collection of 10,000 handcrafted clay characters. If you own one of these, you’ll be granted access to an in-development virtual world, with 3D avatars also in production.

Aswell as these collections, take a look at DEADPXLZ, Yummi Universe and Mocossi Planet for play-to-earn gaming development, Pavia for a metaverse project, and Chilled Kongs if you need some apes.