Crypto/NFT: How to set up your own Smart Contract
without being a bad-ass coder.
NFA, DYOR, etc… you know the drill.
I am starting with some background information, as always, but if you are just here for the links, please scroll down to the second chapter…
Intro: why would I need my own Smart Contract?
As an NFT artist, you will surely have created your first NFTs on one of the bigger platforms, and while a sign-up fee is required in the beginning, all other steps might just have been “for free”.
As usual with things “for free”, they come at a (hidden) cost.
In the case of NFTs, it could be that you minted your NFTs on the platform’s own storefront contract, and if that was for free, you probably used the so-called “lazy minting”. It sounds a bit bad, and it is also a bit bad (but just a bit).
Why is it (a bit!) bad to use lazy minting? Normally, when you do a transaction on the blockchain, this transaction is then documented on the blockchain. The blockchain is often also referred to as a “ledger”, and that has nothing to do with a hardware wallet, but this is a financial term and has to do with book-keeping: who sent what to whom, when, and how much did that transaction cost?
Remember your classical bank account: I transfer money to you, you claim you did not get it, but I can provide proof in the form of my bank statement. In Crypto, this proof is on the block chain.
Or: you buy a house. One side pays the other the money, and then a notary comes and documents this “transaction” for you. Only the notary can document such a transaction of a house, and s/he has to file certain forms in the process with the right authorities.
This is exactly what the blockchain does: transferring one asset to another or rather documenting the process for the whole world to see (if anyone is interested). Now, every transfer and its documentation costs money, the so-call “gas fee”. This fee that gets you (or rather: your asset) from point A to B (like in a car, hence the word “gas fee”).
Since all the transferrable assets need to come from somewhere, there is the “birth” of an asset in the beginning of its life cycle: the minting. (At the other end of the life cycle, there might be the burn address, but let’s not go there for now.)
Now you might think “Wait, I did not pay for my minting? Is this really properly documented on the blockchain?”, then kudos to you for being such a quick learner, because you are right: it is NOT properly documented on the blockchain. Because so far, you uploaded something into the storefront contract of your platform, but there is no official, impartial record of it outside the platform itself.
When you later sell this “upload”, then the transfer of ownership is indeed documented (that is why the buyer has to pay the gas), but the asset still is not clearly specified. On the blockchain, “something” is transferred from A to B, and this “something” is made visible through the platform itself.
Now, when the platform shuts down, there will be ways to make it all visible, so nothing will be lost really, but it will not be as simple as by looking it up somewhere on the blockchain.
Big projects like World of Women, Bored Apes, but also small ones like LonelyLeafs and Itsuki have (or: will have) their own smart contract, so a “World of Women” umbrella token was created (which costs gas), then all the tokens were minted (which again costs gas), and then transferred to their new owners (you guessed it: costs gas).
When you go to Etherscan and look for an address of someone who holds World of Women, you will find a “ERC721 token” list somewhere, and there will be a token called “World of Women (WOW)”, and the Token ID will correspond to the item they are holding (this ID is just a simple increment).
Now, ERC721 is generally used for “1/1” art (so unique art works that only exists with the quantity of 1), and of course, there are 10,000 World of Women, but each of them are unique.
The ERC1155 token standard however is for editions / multiples: the same one NFT is minted x times and can be sold/transferred x times. If you check on Etherscan, you will often find ERC1155 tokens in wallets, and they are often named “OpenSea Shared Storefront”, and yes, these items also have a token ID, so in the end “an OpenSea NFT with ID xy” has been transferred from A to B, but there are millions of these general OpenSea NFTs out there.
With your own Smart Contract you can create your own token.
I called mine “MonikasArt (Monika)”, and they have their own index, so when someone buys art from me that was minted on my Smart Contract, then they bought the “MonikasArt” token with the number x, and it can be tracked all over the blockchain — forever.
The collector did not receive “one of millions of OpenSea tokens, and this one has ID xy and happens to be created by MonikasArt”, but they received a “MonikasArt” token/NFT where I control the total supply, where every step of the NFT life cycle from the moment of the mint is properly documented on the blockchain, and where I can pull statistics who is actually holding MonikasArt tokens — if I want to look it up.
Now, what is a logical downside to all of this: minting will cost a bit of gas since you are minting “on” your Smart Contract, and the documentation now happens on the blockchain (and not in some internal index from an NFT platform), and as we learned in this chapter, every transaction/documentation costs a bit of gas (I paid around Ξ0.014 per item, but this really depends on the gas price).
The creation of a Smart Contract itself requires several steps that require gas, so make sure to have around Ξ0.05 in your wallet for the one-time costs.
So lots of theory up until now, but some knowledge never hurt, right?
Now I will show you how to get started.
How do I set up my own Smart Contract?
I personally chose to do this via Manifold which is probably the most popular platform right now (early 2022). However, this is not a platform endorsement.
Before you start, make sure:
- you have some time because this might take a short while and requires some patience along the way
- you will need around Ξ0.05
- you are aware of the fact that every NFT mint costs a bit of gas when you mint “on” your own Smart Contract (if you are wondering why that is, read the previous chapter first, please)
Remember:
ERC 721 is for 1/1s (unique art)
ERC 1155 is for editions/multiples (the NFT exists x times)
The platform Manifold actually provides a lovely video guide that I recommmend everyone to watch:
https://docs.manifold.xyz/tutorials/creating-your-first-nft
The creation of the Smart Contract is then done in the Manifold Studio:
https://studio.manifold.xyz/
The Studio actually walks you through it pretty awesomely. Only a few things are required, and you can be creative about them (if you want):
- What will your Token name will be?
- How will your ASCII art will be?
The ASCII art is kind of hard to understand at first: why do I really need it? To keep it simple, it is a way to ensure that your contract is completly individual, so use your brand name, an image of yourself, or an image for your art as a starting point.
I personally chose text based ASCII art, but I have seen some amazing other ones — it really depends on how much time and effort you want to put into it.
Just Google “ASCII art generator”, and a lot of free tools will pop up.
I used
https://patorjk.com/software/taag/
At this point, surprisingly, most of the work is done — the rest will be done for you!
You will have to upload your Smart Contract onto the Rinkeby test net, so you need to have some Ethereum for Rinkeby.
Some faucets are suggested (but the first one never seems to work), and I used this one:
https://faucet.paradigm.xyz/
You will then review the contract on the Rinkeby testnet (to be honest: just check if the ASCII art indeed looks nice, everything else is pretty standard), and then you can deploy it onto live.
Please be patient with every step of the way because some of these updates and transactions need a moment to become visible.
The other thing to do is now to set the so-called “on chain royalties” = your royalties that are paid out to you when your item sells on the secondary market.
You need to set the value within the Manifold studio, and all platforms (except OpenSea) will respect that entry and will use it when the item gets re-sold.
(How we do it on OpenSea is covered in the next chapter.)
Hooray!
Okay, how do I mint?
Just be aware: if you want to mint an item “on” your own Smart Contract, you will always have to head back to https://studio.manifold.xyz/, mint your items there (costs gas), and then you can list them for sale on a lot of NFT platforms — and yes, you can list the same item on various platforms at the same time!
It can only be sold once, of course, and once the NFT is sold via platform A, the listings on platforms B, C, etc. will disappear automatically (since the item is not yours to sell anymore; and this fact is documented on the block chain).
Before you mint your first NFT on your own Smart Contract, go back to OpenSea and check if you find a new collection there: the one with the name of the contract you just created.
Please edit the collection within OpenSea, set the royalties there (as written in the previous chapter: OpenSea does not respect on-chain royalties), add some nice banner, featured image, social links etc like you always do and save it — platforms like LooksRare will copy all this in the hours to come, so when you did it once on OpenSea, it will replicate. (Still, if you want, you can edit collection’s descriptions separately on each platform and customize.)
Manifold will guide you through the minting process of your first NFT.
The procedure is the same as with the Smart Contract: deploy onto the Rinkeby testnet, check it out, deploy it on live.
Hooray, your item is now minted and ready to be sold.
Head on over to the platforms you want to sell it from. For each platform, you will have to approve your collection once. This one time fee varies depending from gas; I paid between $10 and $20, but this is a one time thing.
Now you can list your items on the platforms of your choice and start promoting!
Congratulations on your own Smart Contract, and good luck with bids and sales!
FAQs
to be continued…
