NFT? I Made My Own Token in 5 Simple Steps.
The best way to learn is to do.
NFT is all the rage.
NFT means non-fungible token, which means there can only be one of this token in circulation. Lately, this has been used to represent the ownership over limited edition art pieces and even moments like the first tweet by Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey. Grimes made 6 million by selling her art online.
What is the craze all about? Is it really that accessible to the masses?
I am here to find out.
I decided to make my own NFT on opensea.io.
This is the website below that I referenced to make my own NFT. Since I am somewhat familiar with blockchain wallets, it was a breeze for me. Nonetheless, the instructions on the website is easy to follow.
Read till the end for my afterthoughts of this experiment.
Let’s go!
1. Create Your Wallet
Create a metamask wallet on this website.
https://metamask.io/download.html
Download metamask and save the 12 word password. It is as important as a key to a bank save. Without your 12-word key, you cannot access your wallet.
For me, I downloaded the metamask on my Brave browser as an extension but you can choose to downloaded onto your laptop.
This is needed to transact and the wallet can be
2. Access the Platform
Create a collection on the platform, opensea.io .
I tokenised my favourite meme, the stonks meme man.
(Perhaps I can tokenise my posts on Instagram in the future.)
Now, it is time to create my NFT.
3. Create your NFT
I created parameters and properties that represents my artwork the most. In my opinion, listing the item is the most fun step out of all.
Now that it is ready to go, the NFT is ready to be listed. But first, get ready your ETH.
5. Pay Gas Fees
To do any transaction on the Ethereum network, you need gas fees. Like how you need fuel to drive a car, you need gas fees to power your transactions.
According to opensea.io, this first step is to initialize my wallet at the blockchain level. The platform does not take any commission at this stage, but I had to pay the network transaction fee.
Fees I had to pay:
- Transfer fee on Binance
- Gas fee on the chain to transfer from Binance to my MetaMask wallet
- Transaction fees to activate my wallet on opensea.io through MetaMask
I had to top up your Ethereum wallet on MetaMask to pay this one-time gas fee. This is perhaps the most troublesome step if you do not have a crypto wallet. Even if I did have an existing wallet, the transferring of Ether was troublesome and expensive.
It takes a while to transfer from an external wallet to the MetaMask wallet.
You can monitor the transaction details on etherscan.io if you are as impatient/excited as me.
Fun fact: The amount of time the transaction takes, depends on the gas fee you are willing to pay. The higher the gas fee, the more willing miners are to approve your transaction.
Also, at times, the network can be congested. The more transactions happening concurrently, the slower the transactions get. Demand and supply.
Share Your NFT
Here is my first NFT!
Want to bid for my NFT?
Go to the link below!
Update 15/3/21: someone bought my NFT.
Final Thoughts
This proves that anyone can token anything under the sun.
I find that the coolest feature of NFT is that you can trade an intangible asset such as a moment or an experience into a (somewhat) tangible asset that can be traded. It could be the first tweet by Elon Musk or the moment when man landed on the moon. These could all be traded using NFTs. Anyone else can forge an NFT but the verification process is transparent and available to all.
I think it helps with the collectibles market as this makes it easy to verify the actual artwork or experience. Any information on the blockchain is immutable and transparent, thus, the authenticity of the item cannot be changed and it is open for all to verify.
Does this actually democratise the art market so that more people can access it? Perhaps.
The people who buy these art through crypto have to be saavy enough to navigate through the crypto network in the first place. This empowers those who are early adopters of crypto, but also alienate those who have less experience with such technologies. Overall, I find that the barrier to entry for art on blockchain is lower than traditional art or collectibles trading.
That’s it for now!
Till next time.
