Besides buying on secondary markets, the other way to get hold of NFTs is to mint them in the initial sale. What this means is that you are the first recipient of a newly created NFT from a freshly launching collection. Here’s everything you need in order to know how to mint NFTs.
Advantages to Minting NFTs
There are three main reasons as to why you should mint an NFT:
- You’re in right from the start, and if the collection increases in value then you bought your NFT at the cheapest price point.
- You stand a chance of getting a rare NFT. When you buy at the mint, you can’t usually choose what you’ll receive and everything sells at the same price. It’s a random distribution process, and so everyone is hoping for something special.
- It’s fun. If it’s a project with a lot of hype then it’s exciting to be in the mix, and if it’s under the radar then it’s a great feeling if the project blows up later on and you’ve been there from the start.
Pre Sale & Public Sale
When you take part in an initial sale and mint a new NFT, there are often (but not always) two separate rounds to the sale.
Pre Sale
This is also commonly known as a whitelist (or allowlist) sale. Very often, a project will give whitelist places to a limited number of people, and the whitelist sale will go ahead earlier than the public sale.
The price may be lower than in the public sale, but the biggest advantage is that you’re guaranteed to receive an NFT. Basically, your purchase has been reserved.
When you find an upcoming launch that you’re interested in, check all the information on its website and Twitter, and join the project’s Discord server. Usually, it’s in Discord that you’ll get regularly updated launch details, and information about how to get on the whitelist.
Criteria for getting whitelisted vary from project to project. Sometimes, holding a particular NFT will automatically get a whitelist spot. Other times it can be through community involvement, bringing new people into the Discord, creating fan art, or there may be random draws.
One warning though, getting whitelisted has become increasingly competitive and demanding. It’s worth trying for a place but don’t worry if you miss out. Being whitelisted is a bonus rather than an expectation.
If you manage to get on a whitelist, congratulations. At any point during the given pre-sale time period, go to the website and there’ll be a mint button. Connect MetaMask and click through the transaction. Make sure you have enough ETH to cover the mint price and gas fees, and check beforehand how many NFTs you’re allowed to mint.
Public Sale
After the pre-sale comes the public sale. This is completely open, meaning anyone can go to the project’s website and mint an NFT. That means if it’s a highly anticipated drop, there could be a lot of competition to get a purchase through, and it might sell out very quickly.
Gas Wars
If the Ethereum network is congested–like when a lot of people are trying to mint NFTs–then the price of gas goes up.
So if you’re taking part in a busy mint, gas fees can be a lot higher than usual, and as mints are on a first-come-first-served basis, buyers are competing to have their transactions go through first.
MetaMask automatically sets gas fees which you can use as a default, but at a more advanced level, users can try to prioritize their transactions by increasing their gas payments, giving an advantage to people who can pay more.
However, adding to Ethereum’s gas problems is the fact that if your transaction fails, then your gas fee will be spent anyway, and there are no returns.
The reality is that, thanks in large part to interest in NFTs, Ethereum use has soared before the technology itself is in a fully efficient, user-friendly condition.
Does this cause problems, such as with gas fees? Yes, without doubt. But it also indicates that–despite the explosion of interest over the last year–if you’re transacting on Ethereum then you’re still early to a new kind of technology and all the opportunities it can provide.
NFT Reveals
Very often when you mint an NFT, you can see what it is as soon as you receive it, but that’s not always the case as some projects use a process called a reveal.
This means that when buyers first receive their NFTs, all the items have an identical placeholder image and you can’t yet see what you’ve got. Then, at a specified time after the public mint when all the assets have been distributed, the NFTs are simultaneously revealed.
NFTs can be traded before they’ve been revealed, and you see this sometimes on OpenSea. If you go to a new collection’s page and all the assets display an identical placeholder image, then they’re still pre-reveal.
Minting NFTs on Solana & Cardano
If you’re minting on Solana or Cardano, then the general process is the same (with whitelists and pre-sales, and using Discord), except that you don’t have to worry about gas.
Having said that, although transactions are cheap, there are some very minimal costs so you’ll still need to have a little more SOL or ADA than just the exact price of the NFT.
And if you’re attempting to mint something extremely popular, then you still might miss out due to high demand, and there can be problems with network congestion. On the positive side though, you can be glad that you won’t be dealing with any gas issues.
