NFTs, Crypto, Wallets, Ethereum, Minting
NFT Basics: How to Mint Your First NFT from an NFT Drop’s Mint Page
Another “fundamentals” article that you’re free to share with newcomers to the web3 / NFT space.
Ready for another “basics” article for the NFT space? Great! Let’s walk through how to mint an NFT now that, if you’ve read my previous article on how to setup a MetaMask wallet, you’ve got your wallet setup and have some ETH in it.
Safety First!
Before we begin, let’s review perhaps the most critical aspect of minting NFTs — trusting the NFT drop. The crypto space is literally built around cryptocurrency, which means that there are tons of criminals worldwide solely focused on getting their malicious little paws on other people’s crypto via any fraudulent means possible.
And since NFT drops can amass literally millions of dollars in ETH in an extremely short period of time (sometimes literally just minutes), these criminals know the NFT space very well and will readily exploit it in numerous ways. A few of the top ways would be:
- Rugs: This is when an NFT drop mints out a set of NFTs, usually promising all sorts of wonderful future development. But, after the mint, the devs disappear, running off with all of the crypto. If this happens to you, you’ve been rugged. (It’s not too uncommon, unfortunately. Happened to me once, as well.) (See my “Terminology of the NFT Space” article for more delightful terms like this.)
- Scam / lookalike collections: This is when someone has tricked you into clicking on a link to some lookalike collection. You then mint thinking you’re getting an authentic NFT from the set, only you’re definitely not. This happens frequently when people get DMs in Discord, when people inadvertently follow fake Twitter accounts, and/or when people search out a drop on Google and the link that comes up is for a scam site.
- Malicious Code: This is when an NFT drop gets you to interact in some way with a malicious smart contract. Such contracts could do all sorts of terrible things like steal your NFTs or drain your wallet of crypto.
For these and many other reasons, you really need to use caution in the NFT space. Always do a lot of research in order to gain an understanding of the drops you’re interested in minting. Is the team doxxed, and what are their reuptations and qualifications? Who are the devs and what is their reputation like? What’s the community like? Does everything seem on the up-and-up? If you or any friends of yours are devs, have you taken a look at their contract?
This is a giant topic worthy of an article itself, so I won’t cover all of that here. But hopefully you see where I’m going with this. (UPDATE: I actually wrote a LONG piece on web3 security. You can read that here.)
That all said, let’s assume you’ve found a solid NFT drop that you’d like to buy into. So, let’s talk about the steps involved.
Minting Options
Once more “wait a second” note before we begin: There are often two ways to mint:
- Normal minting, whereby users use the drop’s minting application (aka mint page, mint site, minting dApp, etc.)
- Direct-from-contract minting, whereby buyers connect their wallets to the contract, via Etherscan, and interact directly in order to mint NFTs.
For this article, as it’s a “basics” piece, we’re going to focus on the former — normal minting. The latter is often used by more experienced buyers and is also generally only useable during the public mint (as presale / whitelist or special claiming often requires that people use the normal minting application anyway). So, let’s get right to it, shall we?!
Go to the Minting Site
To begin, head to the minting web page. And again, I can’t stress this enough: Always always always be sure you’re going to the official minting site. Most of the time, you can feel sure about this if you’ve gotten the link directly from the NFT drop’s official channel somewhere — either via their official Twitter account, via a link from their official web site, or perhaps from an “#OfficialLinks” channel within their discord.
Anyway, for this example, I’ll use one of the mint apps I built for a client as an example. This one is called Divas by Blaq and features 10k DIVA PFPs. Their mint page is https://mint.divasbyblaq.art/:
As you can see, there are TWO ways to buy — using ETH and using a CC. Let’s talk about ETH first…
For *Ethereum* Buying: Connect Your Wallet
To get started, you need to connect your wallet. When you click a “connect wallet” button, you usually are presented with options. For example, here it asks what kind of wallet software you’re using.
Here we’re going to use MetaMask. But this site also offers other options (WalletConnect, which allows connections to various types of wallets, and also a Coinbase option). But, again, let’s go with MetaMask. When you click there, you get a popup from your wallet.
If you have closed your browser since last working with your wallet, and/or have shut down your computer, you may well see a login screen first, like so:
Others won’t see this screen, as they’re logged in already. But if this is the case, enter your wallet password. (Note that this is NOT your seed phrase as discussed in my previous article on setting up wallets. Instead, this is simply the password to allow you to use your wallet in the browser.)
And then you’ll see what others already logged in will see, which is a prompt for you to decide which account you’d like to connect with:
I’ve selected the top one (as my MetaMask wallet here only has one choice) and then clicked Next. And that gives you a confirm screen telling that you’re about to connect the selected account to the application, and it lists what the application can do from there.
Once we click Connect, we’re connected and can start the mint process.
In this example app, I’ve simply included a little slider so that people can select how many NFTs they’d like to purchase. (In this specific case, the drop owner allows up to 10. Quite often you’ll see larger ranges and/or +/- signs to allow you to select many more by clicking instead of sliding. Either way, you’re simply indicating a quantity.) So, let’s just mint ONE:
… and then let’s simply click the “purchase 1 diva” button. (Other minting sites might have that button say “mint” or something similar.)
Next your wallet should pop open and you’ll get a confirm screen like so:
So, we see the 0.05 ETH price at the top, as we expected. And then below we see the Gas fee and then the total. And so we can see that the total price is estimated at 0.05863179 ETH (which could vary a bit because the gas fee is an estimate and changes every few moments before you hit confirm).
I’m going to reject this transaction at this point, but a normal buyer would hit Confirm here.
And then you’d wait. Usually, this takes maybe 10–20 seconds, but can last longer for various reasons (network traffic, gas spikes, etc). And then soon, you’ll see a notification on your screen that the mint has completed.
Once the mint is complete, you can generally then go to OpenSea and view your NFT. (There is a handy link on this page, below the disconnect button, to the user wallet.) On OpenSea, there are two main ways to view your NFT:
- You can connect your wallet there and then browse to your profile.
- Or you can simply browse (without connecting) to https://opensea.io/[yourwalletaddress]
Either way, congrats — you’ve purchased an NFT!
For CC Buyers…
This one’s pretty easy. Just hit the “purchase using cc” button…
… and then follow the prompts on the screens that follow:
When complete, you’ll see your NFT there:
… and you’ll also be able to visit your NFT on the NFTPay.xyz web site:
We’re using a CC processor called NFTPay.xyz for CC purchasing here. I’ve used several “CC to ETH” CC providers, and feel that NFTPay is the best one out there. (I’ve written numerous articles reviewing various providers. Here’s a more in-depth article on how NFT Pay works. Basically, since most CC buyers do not have an Ethereum wallet, they create one for you during the purchasing process.) Upon completion of the transaction, they also send you a receipt via email, which you should hold onto, as it also links to your NFT. (Or you can login there at https://payments.nftpay.xyz/ and find your NFT anytime.) Once you get used to dealing with NFTs, you can also transfer your NFT our of NFTpay and to your own wallet. I recommend doing this, and recommend reading my article on how to setup a MetaMask wallet.
Other Notes
- Be careful not to jump the gun on that final confirm screen (the one that shows the price plus gas fees). Sometimes if gas is super high, it could show a huge amount that you may not be happy with. This could be because of a gas war going on, or possibly some other reason like you’re experiencing some strange error. Bottom line: Read that final estimate amount and be okay with it before actually confirming. If gas is too high and you aren’t worried about a set selling out right away, consider clicking Reject and then trying again later. Often this can save you some ETH.
- The purchase process is similar on most sites, with possible slight variations here and there. But in general you connect, select a quantity, click a mint button, and confirm on your wallet. Buying existing NFTs on OpenSea (the largest NFT marketplace) is a similar experience of connecting, selecting, clicking “buy”, and going through various confirmations. Again, only connect and interact with sites you trust!
- If you’re minting from a new generative NFT drop, please note that you will usually not see your final NFT immediately upon purchase. That’s because generative collections usually use a “prereveal” image at first. If this is a new concept to you, then read my article about how generative NFT reveals work. (The DIVAS drop shown here in this example is using an instant reveal system. Thus there is no waiting. You will see your NFT right away!)
- If you go to your NFT on OpenSea during an instant reveal and do not see your NFT, or if you purchase an NFT that should have a prereveal image but doesn’t, or if you are still seeing a prereveal image when others are seeing their final NFT… that means you just need to refresh your metadata on Opensea. Just go to the individual NFT page on OpenSea, click the 3 dots item at the top-right, and then click “refresh metadata.” This will tell opensea to go fetch the most current metadata, which will usually fix all of these items. Easy-peasy!
