NFTs, NFT Teams, Marketing Strategy

Strategies for Reserved NFTs in Generative NFT Sets

Yes, it’s okay and expected that you have reserved NFTs, but let’s talk about the many options and considerations before you lock that in.

Photo by Samuel Regan-Asante on Unsplash

One thing most NFT teams want to consider while planning out a generative NFT drop is the idea of reserved NFTs. I happened to come across a highly misguided comment on LinkedIn this morning on this topic, and I wanted to set the record straight about reserved NFTs. So, let’s start with a definition so that we’re all on the same page:

What Are Reserved NFTs?

In many generative NFT smart contracts, you’ll likely find some type of functionality that holds back a certain number of NFTs from the public mint. So, for example, let’s take a typical generative NFT drop consisting of 10,000 NFTs. You might see something like 100–300 NFTs set aside as reserves.

Let’s say it’s 300 in this example. Effectively, this means that the maximum number of public mints would be 9,700. Those last 300 are reserved. They’re certainly going to be minted — just not by members of the public via the normal public sale.

Usually the reserved ones are claimed by those they’re reserved for. In my own smart contracts, I usually setup the ability for…