Since the beginning of 2021 NFTs or intangible digital assets have experienced a veritable fever of popularity, which recently had, like many other bubbles, its moment of pricking with the collapse in value of many of these digital contents with verifiable attribution of ownership.
Before creating the NFT, it is necessary to select the marketplace where it will be sold, create an electronic wallet where to manage the transaction and connect both
There have been many who have bet on acquiring one, but perhaps not so many who have considered generating their own NFT. For those who have thought about this possibility, the following tutorial will allow them to enter this peculiar world and, who knows, maybe even achieve some profit.
The first step is to understand what an NFT consists of: Essentially it is about attributing ownership over a digital content to an ownerthis circumstance is universally verifiable with complete security thanks to Blockchain technology (blockchain) of immutable and decentralized registration. This makes it possible to trade with the ownership of such an intangible asset (an image, a video, a song, an audio file…) called a token which, although it can be copied without deterioration, will only belong to a holder who will be the one who can dispose of it.
To trade these tokens there are online marketplaces specialized in NFT which charge commissions for handling transactions. Usually prices are traded in the Ethereum cryptocurrency, which adds an additional cost for the work of the Blockchain miners in charge of verifying these transactions. It will be necessary to decide on which platform the transactions of the NFT that has been created will be carried out (even before creating it) to take into account the associated costs.
Some of these NFT marketplaces are: AtomicHub, OpenSea, Rarible, Solsea… They include their own smart contracts if it is decided to create the NFT in such marketplaces but it is not mandatory to do so. These smart contracts can also be generated externally and subsequently associated to the NFT once the marketplace where their sale will be managed has been decided.
The NFT has not yet been created as such and another preliminary step remains Having a wallet or virtual purse where cryptocurrency transactions will be managed associated with the purchase and sale of this digital asset or intangible asset. Coinbase or MetaMask are some of the most popular, and can be used as extensions in browsers such as Chrome or Firefox, as well as being compatible with iOS and Android. Creating the virtual wallet is as simple as downloading the corresponding extension, installing it, adding it to the browser, invoking it in the browser menu, clicking on the “Create new wallet” option and providing the user and password data. In this sense all precautions will be few to create secure and robust passwords.
Both wallets, Coinbase and MetaMask, offer the possibility to add a security phrase, composed of twelve random words which will be of vital importance to keep safe as they will be the only way to recover the account in case of uninstalling the browser extension or the browser itself, or in case you want to add the digital wallet to another device.
With the wallet created you will have to connect it to the marketplace chosen to commercialize the NFT. All these platforms have a selector (and even an automatic detector) of compatible wallets, where it is sufficient to select the one being used.
Now you are ready to proceed to the creation of your own NFT, for which you can use the aforementioned managers, Rarible, OpenSea and similar, since they all have the option “Create a new NFT”… or even a collection (limited series) of NFT with the options “Create a new NFT” or “Create a new Collection”, within which you can, in turn, add newly created NFT.
Once the NFT is created (an image, a video, an audio, a Twitter or Instagram post…), from the chosen marketplace platform it will generate a page from which it can be displayed and offered for sale. With small differences, it includes the file itself and/or an external link to it, its name and description, characteristics… in addition to specifying the price (fixed or in auction mode to the highest bidder) and payment method in the cryptocurrency of choice.
After a short waiting period, the NFT will appear for sale in the marketplace and also in the NFT section of the virtual wallet of the user/author, although some wallets only register it when it has already been purchased by someone else.
From here the sale will develop with more or less interest depending on how attractive the NFT is to potential buyers and will also depend on the visibility given to the sale by the author through other means, such as social networks.