How to Use 4EVERLAND Buckets to Mint NFTs on The Ethereum Network
Over recent years, NFTs have become quite popular and the Ethereum network is regarded as the pioneer in building the infrastructure around NFT minting platforms. NFTs have unlocked a lot of possibilities that we never would have accomplished in a normal web 2.0 infrastructure.
What are NFTs?
NFT in full stands for Non-fungible Tokens, which is a unique identity on a Blockchain smart contract. NFTs, bring in the ability of storing small amounts of data on chain and can be owned and transferred to a new owner.
Ethereum has 2 NFT standards which are ERC-721 and ERC-1155. ERC stands for Ethereum Request for comments which are improvement proposals aimed at increasing the utility of the network while maintaining decentralization and security at it’s core.
ERC-721 is the first formal NFT standard and is known for the early days of Cryptopunks and other NFT projects. This standard allows reach token to have a unique Metadata URI.
ERC-1155 adds more features to the ERC-721 and it is known for the multi-token standard whereby many token types share one contract. It also supports efficient batch transfers and the tokens can be fungible, non-fungible or semi fungible
How 4EVERLAND buckets works?
4EVERLAND buckets is an object storage system that provides an avenue to store files on IPFS, which is a decentralized storage network. 4EVERLANDS buckets let you upload, pin, and retrieve files from IPFS in a very simple way. Not only can you store your files on IPFS, but buckets let you pin and retrieve files from IPFS.
Buckets simplified the process to store NFT data on the Ethereum network. By using 4EVERLAND buckets, you get to spend less on gas fees to mint an NFT on the Ethereum network. Another perk about 4EVERLAND buckets is that it is completely free and it has a 99% uptime. To learn more about 4EVERLAND buckets, feel free to watch this video whereby Darren talks more about how it works https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqHuexb1LRY.
Minting NFTs on the Ethereum network
Minting NFTs on Ethereum requires a good understanding of how smart contracts work. Ethereum uses Solidity as a programming language to deploy smart contracts. The contract is deployed in a transaction, and once deployed, you can call its functions and if you wish to modify states, you may incur some gas fees.
Below is an example of a function to mint an NFT:
const cid = 'bafkreifqueh6d56ejjniq6dzsrbubwz73lb6b7cbxwb3vjh2pi5q4elezm'
const tx = await gameItem.awardItem(player, 'ipfs://${cid}')
await tx.wait()
const uri - await gameItem.tokenURI(1)
uri
"ipfs://bafkreifqueh6d56ejjniq6dzsrbubwz73lb6b7cbxwb3vjh2pi5q4elezm"You can also store NFT metadata on IPFS and this helps lower the cost of minting gas fees.
const metadata = await client.store({
name: '4everland nft #101',
description: "intro to 4ever buckets on Ethereum',
})Some additional resources to help you deploy an NFT on Ethereum include:
hardhat.org/getting-started
openzeppelin.com/contracts/4.x/erc721
docs.ipfs.io/how-to/mint-nfts-with-ipfs
Conclusion
leveraging on 4EVERLAND buckets to store NFT data can be a great option to ensure you pay low gas fees when minting an NFT. This article has touched on how you can mint NFTs on Ethereum and also add NFT metadata.
