Discover the types of NFT minting!
Non-fungible tokens are a phenomenon of recent years that continues to develop its potential despite market corrections. Recently, Ordinals — NFTs on the Bitcoin network have made their mark in the crypto industry. We have prepared a series of articles for you in which we take a closer look at the technical side of NFT. Today we will talk about the creation process for non-Bitcoin tokens and the types of mints to familiarize you with the topic. In the next article, on the other hand, you will learn what the NFT minting process looks like on the Bitcoin network. Enjoy your reading!
The technical side of the NFT minting
The process of NFT creation begins with selecting a blockchain network. There are various options, but Ethereum is the most popular. However, keep in mind that this is not the only network on which you can mint. There are many others, such as Solana, Binance Chain, and Polygon. Next, you need to create a smart contract (in Bitcoin, there is no such possibility). For this, you can use languages such as Solidity, Vyper, Go, or Rust depending on the network. At this stage, you can define what the NFT represents and what data and functionality it should support. Once we have defined a structure in the smart contract that includes a name, a description linking to a previously prepared file, and other metadata, we can move on to testing whether the smart contract using dedicated frameworks works and implementing it on the chosen network, which may require a specific amount of cryptocurrency. The next key step is to create the NFT by calling the contract function. It can be done using the MetaMask wallet by finding the right smart contract and executing the transaction. It will have a special ID token (a 256-bit integer that is generated by a hash algorithm) to identify it in the blockchain. The last thing is to assign a value to a specific cryptocurrency. The token can then be listed on auction platforms or added to collections.
Types of NFT minting
Once you’ve learned the technicalities of NFT minting, let’s move on to the discussion of mint types. The most characteristic type of minting is the standard mint, while the other types are variants of this process.
Standard mint
It allows for a higher preliminary audit of the smart contract in which the NFT structure is written before it is minted. It allows interested parties to check whether it meets the selected standards. From the collection authors’ side, the advantage is that they can pre-build a community interested in their NFT even before it is released. The disadvantage of a standard mint is that it is vulnerable to fraud by people who will copy the code and, with minor changes, make it available to users who are unaware of it. More and more platforms are being developed that allow the minting of non-fungible tokens legally and securely.
Public mint
A type of mint in which anyone interested can mint NFT without being listed on the whitelist. Many collections have achieved great success despite the lack of a previous whitelist. For example, one can cite a popular collection as a former CryptoPunks released on Ethereum in 2017, whose most expensive NFT (Punk number 3100) was bought for 69,000 ETH, which at the time equalled about $214 million.
Whitelist mint & whitelist raffle mint
A type of mint where a pre-existing whitelist is created where selected individuals can purchase NFTs, which are generally cheaper than on the secondary market. A whitelist mint is otherwise known as a private mint, where the whitelist is made available only to a select community or group of collectors. Its variation is the whitelist raffle mint which differs in that not everyone enrolled will be allowed to purchase NFTs, but they are selected through a lottery.
Hybrid mint
It is a combination of public and private mint, where some collectors obtain NFTs from the whitelist, and the rest can mint them publicly. NFTs can differ from each other in various characteristics, making them more or less rare. The more exclusive part can be donated through a whitelist, and the rest can be minted publicly.
Free mint
A type of mint that does not require any cost. The only cost, in this case, may incur fees such as Gas, which is paid by the buyer instead of the creator. This is a very popular NFT creation model.
Stealth mint
A type of mint that promotes fairness by restricting bots from accessing smart contracts and minting NFTs before the release date. Some people use bots to mass mint during the launch, depriving other users of this opportunity.
Lazy mint
The NFT is available off-chain in this variant and becomes minted only after sale. This provides the creators with the funds to cover the costs of NFT creation and eliminates the risk that the funds invested in the collection before are lost in case of lack of interest.
Sudden mint
It is the opposite of a lazy mint. The collection suddenly appears on the market, and users feeling FOMO (fear of missing out) start driving sales. This risky approach requires very dynamic marketing when the collection appears.
Summarizing
The creators of collections have a choice of mint options depending on the costs they are willing to incur and their willingness to take risks. The success of NFT collections, especially artistic ones, whose price is set solely by the market and which do not have specific utilities, depends largely on the hype generated by proper marketing and the market situation. Crypto winter is not conducive to expensive purchases. Still, among those interested in buying expensive non-fungible tokens, there are always interested parties with huge capital and can afford costly investments.
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