uMint — Create Your Own NFTs

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PhantasticPhantasma

7 min readDec 21, 2020

Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) have a vast array of possible use cases, where gaming and art are the two that have received most recognition so far for their potential to disrupt industries. When it comes to gaming, GOATi has showcased the immense power of NFTs through 22 Racing Series and their game hub Pavillion, reviewed by CoinTelegraph not long ago.

Digital art — for all artists or a select few?

However, various forms of art has gained increasing popularity among NFT aficionados, mainly through services like OpenSea, Rarible and Superrare. These services allow their users to create artwork represented as NFTs and to trade them online in a secure manner. This has been an amazing step forward for this cutting edge technology, but it has also served to highlight some of the existing challenges. There are strict technical limitations surrounding NFT technology on Ethereum, and various tradeoffs have been made when it comes to storing the actual media the NFT represents. The randomly skyrocketing minting and transaction fees on Ethereum has essentially meant that “minting NFTs is not for everyone” — until now.

Breaking free of the limitations!

We are proud to report that the independent developer group GhostDevs who created the world’s first cross chain NFT marketplace GhostMarket — working in collaboration with the Phantasma team — has just released the uMint NFT Factory. This release marks a departure from the current setting where minting is characterised by limitations and compromises, and ushers in a new era of freedom to create and control.

Utilizing Phantasma’s advanced Smart NFT technology, the new frontier in digital art economy is brought within reach of all artists, not just the select few who can adapt to strict limitations and cost prohibitive fees.

Secure — Capable — Valuable

The uMint NFT Factory allows anyone to create their own unique Smart NFTs representing their media of choice. A digital art creator can mint NFTs representing his artwork — unique or as numbered limited editions. A musician can mint NFTs of their new tracks — whether unique masters or their new single. The actual media is securely stored in a decentralized manner using the proven IPFS technology, and the NFT can be listed directly in the NFT marketplace in the very same transaction that creates it. To ensure that the original artist benefits from second hand sales a royalty percentage on all new sales can be hardcoded into the NFT’s ROM (Read Only Memory) — while changeable attributes can be stored in the NFT’s RAM (Random Access Memory).

The uMint NFT Factory uses a custom smart contract to facilitate Smart NFT minting, and one of the many capability expansions coming up from GhostDevs will be to allow artists to deploy their own custom smart contract at the click of a button — to further stand apart and solidify their branding.

To further increase the attractiveness of their creations, artists can choose to infuse their Smart NFTs with any type of asset circulating on the Phantasma blockchain — from the native coins SOUL and KCAL, to ETH, NEO, GAS and even other NFTs (more about this later on). This can serve both to set a floor price of the asset, and to increase its exclusivity.

Affordable minting — virtually free transactions

A core advantage of utilizing the Phantasma blockchain as the technological backbone of the uMint NFT Factory is that the blockchain is virtually free to use. At the time of writing, a transaction on Phantasma costs no more than $0,0001 — that’s 0,01 cents! — and with its two second block times the assets will arrive at their destination almost instantly. At a chain level, the fees for minting Smart NFTs are similar to transaction fees.

This means that the main cost of minting a Smart NFT on Phantasma is the service fee charged by the provider, and GhostMarket has chosen a novel approach to benefit the community while keeping the service financially sustainable. The service fees follow a laddered approach, where minting a single NFT incurs a cost of 20 KCAL for the end user. At the time of writing, this is the equivalent of $0.40. Of these 20 KCAL, half is immediately burned during the minting transaction, contributing a deflationary element to the KCAL token dynamics. For an artist minting multiple NFTs — up to a thousand can be minted in a single transaction — the cost per additional NFT beyond the first one is merely 4 KCAL per NFT, of which half is still burned. On top of this, 1 of the 2 remaining KCAL is infused into each NFT automatically, providing an incentive to recycle NFTs that may no longer be of use at some point to unlock the KCAL inside. Hence, the actual GhostMarket fee for additional NFTs minted is 1 KCAL a piece, $0.02 at the time of writing — the remainder is either infused into your creation or burned to contribute to KCAL deflation.

Every NFT minted reduces the supply of KCAL through burning half the fee

Get started for free — community funds

Even with these low costs, the Phantasma community recognizes that some artists may be hesitant to take the first step to acquire some SOUL or KCAL to be able to mint their first Smart NFTs on Phantasma. To help artists get started at zero cost, funds have been established to cover the initial minting costs. Focusing on musicians and music NFTs, House of NFT launched #soulchallenge and an associated fund — reach out on Twitter or Telegram to connect and get started. Similarly, devoted Phantasma SOULdier G M Radford established a fund to cover initial minting costs for artists wanting to publish their digital artwork on Phantasma.

Call to action and Phantasma community funds

Power up your NFTs in the uMint NFT Factory

Another groundbreaking feature of Phantasma’s Smart NFTs is that the information about assets infused within an NFT is stored securely on Phantasma’s own chain storage solution. This means that not only can you infuse an NFT with assets during the initial minting — you can top up or add more assets to your existing NFTs!

Infuse your NFTs with any asset available on the Phantasma blockchain

The uMint NFT Factory allows you to load your existing NFTs into an infuse cart, a specialized shopping cart system, and infuse them with any asset you please. And you are not limited to single assets — add a little SOUL, a drop of ETH, maybe some NEO — all in the same NFT. You can even embed NFTs within NFTs — for anyone who has seen the movie Inception, yes, this is the same basic concept. This opens up a whole new layer of possibilities where self minted Phantasma Smart NFTs can become metaphorical russian dolls, and users can peel away layer by layer through burning the NFTs to unlock what is inside.

Choose your NFTs — infuse with any token and any amount

For your eyes only

Every Phantasma Smart NFT can also hold secret contents which remains locked and unavailable to anyone but the owner of the Smart NFT. The secret contents is an encrypted string of characters such as a URL, and can point towards anything, such as the original full quality piece of art or music track that is being sold. To access the secret contents a signed transaction must be triggered by the owner’s wallet — the encrypted contents is downloaded and then decrypted locally, safe from prying eyes.

Hunting exclusivity? As a prospective buyer you have full transparency as to whether locked contents has ever been accessed through the unlock counter available on GhostMarket when viewing the NFT. An additional feature where the NFT will automatically be burned once the secret contents has been unlocked has already been developed, and will be enabled through GhostMarket at a later date. Both secret contents NFTs and burn when viewed secret contents NFTs enable a multitude of use cases including but not limited to storing source art for music and artwork NFTs. Consider one-time vouchers for example — viewable and usable one time only, then irreversibly destroyed.

So what are you waiting for?

Now that you know the power of Phantasma’s Smart NFT technology it’s time to get started. If you are an artist yourself, head over to the uMint NFT Factory and get started — if you’re not, have a go anyway and get a feel for the excellent user experience and powerful capabilities provided!

And last, but perhaps most important: Take a minute to think about all the people you know who are aspiring artists. Think about their struggle and how much they deserve a break. Share this information with them — point them to House of NFT’s excellent call to action — and help them get started on making their dream come true!

Until next time,

The Writer’s Lounge