TS4 | How To Mint An NFT

Before you can show off your shiny new NFT, you need to ‘mint’ it in order to bring it into existence. In this episode we will discuss how an NFT is minted and some issues and points to take note

Discussion Topics: How to Mint an NFT

• Where to source your new NFT
• Pre-sale and public sale
• Whitelisting and how to get whitelisted
• The impact of ‘gas’ prices
• Leveraging NFT communities

Transcript: How to Mint an NFT

Hi everybody, welcome back to another episode of The Token Singaporean, my name is Vnstr. And for today’s episode, we are going to discuss a little bit about one method you can use to purchase your NFT. And that is to mint your NFT. So what exactly does it mean to mint your NFT? And what are some things you need to do in order to be able to work towards minting? What are some things you need to take note of, and just a couple of issues regarding the minting of NFTs, so stay tuned to find out more.

Hello, everybody. So thank you so much for being back here. I’m so excited for you guys to join me on this journey into the Web 3 space and finally officially become part of this space by owning your very first NFT. So today, we’re gonna talk a little bit about how to purchase your NFT. So one way you can do it, and that is through minting. So when we talk about minting an NFT basically, we are trying to say that we are buying firsthand from the creators or founders once they start their launch. So it is usually done through their official website, or whatever site that they create for this mint to happen.

So usually, for founders and creators, what they will do is they will announce through their Discord servers or Twitter, how many pieces of NFTs there will be for their collection. This is important because the number of pieces within a collection kind of determines whether it could possibly sell or whether you will need to sort of fight for a chance to mint it.

How much supply there is if there is more, it’s probably easier to mint. If it’s less, you might need to get into a presale list or so on and so forth in order to be able to guarantee yourself a mint. So this information is very important thereafter, usually closer to mint, they will also specify the fair value, which they are going to launch their NFTs for, and how many NFTs you’ll be allowed to mint.

So these prices and these numbers can be standard across the board. But sometimes it can also differ according to the different tiers that you’re in within their community. So sometimes it’s very important for you to achieve a certain row or get a certain row within the community in order to be able to mint first or be able to mint more, and so on and so forth.

So amongst all these variations, I think most of the time, the most common distinction most projects will have will be to have a presale and a public sale. So usually presale will happen first, what happens is that the project will usually reserve a specific number of NFTs allocated for presale people to mint. And then when that’s done, the public sale will happen.

Sometimes if the project is very, very hyped, they might get minted out during the presale period. So sometimes projects, they will not allocate specific numbers, they will not reserve things for presale or public sale, they will just allow presale people to mint first, if it mints out, then that’s it. There’ll be no public sale, but if not, okay, usually Presale means priority assessment. And thereafter, the rest of the public can get to mint.

So you often hear this term called whitelist, or whitelisting, or getting whitelisted. What does it mean? Basically, getting a whitelist means gaining access to the presale. And what are some benefits of getting into presale? Actually, there are quite a couple of benefits depending on how different projects structure the entire system. So for example, if you get into a whitelist, it could mean that you get a guaranteed spot to mint within a specific time window.

This means that you don’t have to go to gas wars with others, especially if the project is very hyped. So at this point, you’ll be wondering what’s a gas war, so I will talk about this gas thing in a bit. But to put things simply, gas fees are like a transaction fee. And it varies according to a couple of factors. But we’ll get into that later. Secondly, sometimes getting in presale also means that you might get to the mint at a cheaper price. So sometimes some projects tear their prices. So presale people get to mint at a certain price a little bit lower, followed by public sale people at a higher price.

To get into whitelist and to be able to mint during presale usually requires you to get into projects very early, or you need to complete certain tasks in order to be allocated a whitelist spot, and usually, the tasks that they require people to do really depends on the needs and wants of each community, the vibe that they’re going for. And sometimes it’s just a trending, like maybe this period of time, most projects would get people to grind to get presale.

So for example, you have to talk in their discord until you hit a certain level in order to get into their presale. Sometimes if they want to grow their community, they might start an invitation contest. So in this case, maybe inviting a certain number of people will get you a presale spot. Sometimes it could be through competitions, and so on and so forth. So you need to be constantly updated and looking out for the announcements in order to find out the different ways you can get your presale spots for various projects.

So let’s backtrack a bit and talk a little bit about gas prices. As I mentioned just now, getting the presale means you don’t have to compete in gas wars. So what exactly does it mean to pay gas and what’s the gas price?

So as I mentioned earlier, to put it simply, gas price is like a transaction fee, you need to pay every time you make a transaction on the Ethereum blockchain. The price is usually dependent on the demand of the network during the point of purchase.

So for example, if more people want to use the network at the same time, the demand is high. And thus, the gas price will be higher, and vice versa. So you can imagine if you are minting a project that everyone wants to mint, and if you have to compete with everyone else during the public sale, it probably means that you have to fork out a very high gas price in order to be able to get the mint. And sometimes even if you put a very, very high gas price, you can actually kind of control how much you want to put as gas price.

Sometimes even if you put a very high gas price, you might still get outgassed by others, because there are others who will really, really dump money to pay the gas price in order to get their mints so it becomes really cutthroat, especially if you’re working with a smaller capital. And yeah, that would not be ideal.

And when we’re talking about gas price, we’re not talking about $1 or 2 it is actually very significant. So for example, I once minted a project that was supposed to be a free mint, so everybody gets to mint for free. You only have to pay for gas. It’s a 10,000-piece collection. And it was super-duper hype. This project is called NFT Walls. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. But right now they’re doing super well. But during that time it was a free mint.

But because I had to compete in gas wars with other people, I paid about 0.3 if in gas which was about 1.2k USD, during then based on the Ethereum prices, then. So 1.2k in transaction fees, you can imagine that. So if you’re playing with small capital, it’s probably a little bit too high for you to get started. So you want to prevent that. And in order to do that getting into presale is the best way to go.

So when you get into the whitelist, and you’re allowed to mint during the presale, what happens is usually projects, they will allocate a certain window for presale people to mint. And basically, during this period, you can just choose a time when gas is relatively lower to mint, your NFT in order to pay less for gas price.

So gas prices can still range between the low 10s to maybe 50, $60 but definitely will not be looking at a range of hundreds or thousands. So, it’s a lot more affordable. And I think it will make more sense for most of the beginners over here.

And also an additional thing to take note of is that with improvement in contract efficiency, many projects have also optimised their contract in order to lower gas prices very, very significantly. So we can be looking at, maybe $12, $13 even on high gas days.

So minting definitely has its perks because founders can control a contract where you’re minting from. As such, they can kind of control some of these variables to make it more efficient, such that you pay lower transaction fees in order to get your NFTs.

Of course, this is just a very brief overview of what gas prices are about and how it kind of affects the amount that you pay for your NFTs. We can probably dedicate an entire episode just talking about gas prices and the different ways you can go around manipulating the prices in order to control how much you want to spend on gas, but we will not do it right now. Perhaps down the road, I would do an episode on gas prices alone. But for now, that’s all you need to know.

So the last part is about how to find these projects, right? As I mentioned before, the main platforms, especially Discord and Twitter, are usually the best places where you can connect yourself with new communities with new projects and get first-hand information, latest information about the projects.

And honestly, if you ask me, I think the easiest way for you to get a presale spot usually is if you’re really early into a project, because usually when Discord servers projects first start up, they want to attract more people, so they may open their Discord and they will say, first 100 to enter the space will get immediate whitelist or they will get presale access.

So you don’t have to do anything, you just have to be early, and you’ll be part of the list. And you can decide later when you want to mint. So there’s this thing that I go by that is if you have a whitelist get the whitelist first, you can always decide whether you want to mint it later. And along the way, main updates and activities usually happen on Discord and Twitter as well. So it’s extremely crucial to keep updated and actively participate in the community. So if you miss the early bird whitelisting opportunities, there are also many other ways.

Sometimes there may be special events to give out a whitelist, sometimes they have giveaways, sometimes they have contests, and so on and so forth. So there will be a lot of different promotion plans for them to gather people to join their Discord server and to be part of the presale list because from there, they can sort of estimate how many people will be minting their project. And then from there, they can also gauge a price to put on their NFTs like how many NFTs they can allocate per person, and so on and so forth.

So it’s very important for you to keep yourself updated, and not just get whitelisted and just leave and come back when it’s time to mint. If you do that you probably will not be able to make an informed decision as to whether you want to be part of the community or not. Because you’re not familiar with the ongoing, you don’t really know what they’re doing. So it’s important for you to keep yourself updated at all times.

And finally, if you have tried all means to get on the whitelist, but you still somehow didn’t manage to get it, but you have such a strong conviction towards the project, you really want to mind fear not, there are always other ways, for one after presale, there’s usually the public sale. So for some projects, as I mentioned, they only allocate a certain number of spots for presale. So they still reserve a couple of spots for the public.

So if that’s the case, you can always wait for the public sale window to try your luck in minting. If not, you can always buy from the secondary market as to what the secondary market is about and how you go about buying from the secondary market we will look more into that during our next episode.

And with that, we’ve come to the end of today’s episode. I hope that you have a better understanding now as to what minting is about. And how you can get access to presale, and how you can potentially get access to the best possible price within a project right at the onset. And yeah, I just hope that no matter what you do, just enjoy the process.

Join a couple of communities, and join the activities. And I think at the end of the day, it is meant to be fun. So at the end of the day, no matter what, just try to enjoy the process. Don’t let it feel like it’s a tough job. Because if not, then I think it’s no different from going out there to do like a nine-to-five, something that you hate. So yeah, just enjoy yourself at the end of the day.

And now that we are here, once again, I would like to emphasise that nothing I said over here is financial advice. Take it more as a discussion. I’m by no means saying that getting into presale means that you know, you definitely make it, or that you’re definitely getting in the best possible price. I mean, a lot of factors also play a part, a lot of factors that are not considered here.

Probably as you delve into projects, more and more you get to see different things happening. And I think it will be a good time for us to discuss all the other factors that could affect how things go in the market.

But yes, anytime you have any questions, feedback, or comments, feel free to write to us. We’ll appreciate your feedback. We appreciate your questions. And I realised that for the past couple of episodes, I didn’t really tell people where they can find me on the internet. So if you want to hit me up on Twitter, you can find me at VNSTR_eth and if you’ve enjoyed this episode, please help me by writing a review. It will really go a long way. Other than that, I hope you guys stay safe in the market and have a nice day ahead and I will see you again in the next episode. Bye.