NFT Deep Dive: What does minting an NFT mean?

Welcome to the cryptohunt jam where we spend one minute a day to explain crypto. In plain english.

Welcome to our last episode in the mini series on NFTs. Today, we’ll explain what minting an NFT means and how you can do it too.

Minting means nothing more than creating an NFT. The word stems from old German and means making a coin - and in fact, central banks use it to describe the process of literally printing money.

When an NFT is minted, it is simply created on the blockchain. Nothing complicated: it just includes a link to the original JPG or GIF and other optional information, such as residuals that you, the creator, might get from every subsequent sale.

So, you have that amazing idea and some clever art that’ll make for a hopefully very successful NFT collection? The easiest way to get started as a creator is to use a marketplace like OpenSea.com to mint your NFTs and list them for sale.

It is almost as easy as posting on Twitter, and each marketplace has great tutorials. But there is one caveat that is not intuitive: some blockchains have very high fees, and those also apply to minting NFTs. Ethereum is the current standard, but transaction costs of hundreds of dollars per NFT may make it useless for your project.

Luckily there are alternatives. OpenSea itself let’s you choose Polygon as an alternative with no fees. And Solsea.io or Solanart.io operate on Solana, which will only cost you cents in minting fees.

And with that we say: Best of luck! Let us know if this inspired you to create the next cryptopunks, we’d love to podcast about it!

Disclaimer: This podcast references our opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Do your own research and seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.