What is an NFT?
NFT is a non-fungible token. The adjective “non-fangible” is often used in economics to describe features such as uniqueness and incompatibility. In cryptospace, non-fundability simply indicates that one item cannot be exchanged for another.
A “token” as a unit of account is basically a certificate of validity stored on the decentralized blockchain, making digital assets traceable and accessible to everyone. As a result, NFTs are a unique cryptocurrency that can be categorized into almost any category, usually for paintings, videos, music, collectible items for video games, or other types of creative digital production. It can take shape.
Since the rapid growth of NFTs in early 2021, everyone in the world is now buying and selling these tokens. But how can someone convert the actual art to an NFT? And how can you sell them? difficult? Do I need coding to create an NFT?
In a nutshell, the procedure is very simple. Read this quick guide below to understand the main steps and their details.
What is crypto art?
Art is the most common use of NFTs, and it’s no wonder that NFT-style cryptographic art has become popular these days. The fact that new blockchain technology creates the conditions that allow artists to earn tens of millions of dollars from digital painting is a lot of creation that previously could only dream of such a level of ease and accessibility. Fascinated people.
NFT’s sensational high-profile auctions linked to digital art have received considerable attention. The most expensive sales hit the headline as they got millions. In 2022, the most expensive NFT at a price of $ 91.8 million was “Merge” by the pseudonym digital artist Pak.
In 2021, the first 5000-day NFT collection by artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Everydays: Beeple, was another very expensive auction, selling for $ 69.3 million.
Crypto art is associated with unique artwork created by renowned artists and sold at auctions on the market, including popular NFT platforms as well as traditional auction houses such as Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Still, most of the art in crypto space is created by unknown talented beginners.
However, the pioneer named CryptoPunks and the recently popular NFT collection named Bored Ape Yacht Club are examples of generative art. This type of art is usually created with the help of various autonomous systems. Images in these popular collections are created by assembling a selection of simple image components in different combinations.
Related: How to evaluate the value of NFTs?
How to turn your art into an NFT?
If you’re already wondering if you need to convert your art to NFTs, the answer is clearly “Yes, why not give it a try”. The process of creating an NFT is not complicated, costly, or technical. All you need is a set of creative skills and a computer.
Again, keep in mind that NFTs have the potential to convert songs, videos, GIFs and other digital items, not just images. Therefore, you first need to choose the right art field that suits you best. Depending on this, you will understand the set of skills required to become a real NFT creator.
For example, as a graphic artist, you need to use graphic editing tools such as Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, MS Paint, and CorelDraw. You can also try alternatives such as 3D modeling, which are known to be difficult for beginners. If you choose 3D animation, you are expected to use 3D modeling tools such as Blender and Cinema 4D to design animated graphics and characters that will be converted to NFTs.
Then you need to come up with a unique idea for your single artwork or maybe a complete collection and think about the content that will eventually change.
Does NFT need coding?
Creating an NFT from digital art without coding is very easy. The process of creating them is called minting. This is basically the act of exposing a unique instance of the token to the blockchain. NFTs are created when they are created, just as metal coins are created and added to distribution.
After this procedure, certain digital arts are safe, tamper-proof, and difficult to operate. This digital item has become an NFT and can now be purchased, sold, and digitally tracked for resale or recollection.
For artists, incorporating NFTs into digital art is a novel way to monetize their work fairly. In most NFT marketplaces, artists can program loyalty clauses at the time of casting so that secondary sales of their work generate their passive income. As the demand for artwork grows, becomes famous, and becomes more valuable, artists can benefit from it.
Minting is an automated process offered by most NFT marketplaces. To get started, you need to perform some simple steps described below.
Still, if you already have experience in this area and want to become an NFT developer, you can try coding your own NFT. To dig deeper into NFT programming, it’s important to remember that the Ethereum network still dominates NFT development.
The usual coding language used for NFT development is Solidity. It is designed to develop smart contracts that run on the Ethereum blockchain. Others are Javascript and HTML / CSS. In addition, the InterPlanetary File System is typically used to store an artist’s NFT.
Choosing an NFT Marketplace for Creating and Selling NFTs
An important part of the process of creating an NFT is choosing the right NFT platform. The right choices are supported file formats, cryptocurrency wallet matching, user access to the platform, price to create an NFT, or transaction fees paid to supplement the computing energy required for processing. It depends on various factors. Validate the transaction.
There are many different online NFT marketplaces in the crypto space, each with slightly different behavior. It’s important for artists to know if the platform is curated or self-service-based and to choose the one that is most appropriate, visited and user-friendly for them.
The self-service or uncurated NFT platform has free access to all artists. To upload an NFT, all you have to do is register through a cryptocurrency wallet and pay the transaction fee to create an NFT. The most popular are mass self-service NFT marketplaces such as OpenSea and Rarible.
The curated NFT platform is more selective for artists. To register and create art on these platforms, you will need to submit an application with all the details about the NFT collection and previous art experience.
Another visible drawback of curated NFT marketplaces is the long waiting time for expert decisions. However, this rigorous selection criteria will most likely bring top digital artwork to display on such platforms, giving buyers confidence in the artists who collaborate with these platforms. Well-known curated platforms are SuperRare and Nifty Gateway, to name a few.
Related: NFT Marketplace: How to Buy and Sell Non-Fungible Tokens
Cryptocurrency wallet settings
Cryptocurrency wallets are the tools you need to access the NFT platform, sign transactions and manage your balances.
Before setting up, the most important thing is to make sure that your wallet matches the cryptocurrency used on the NFT platform you plan to use. Most NFT marketplaces are Ethereum-based, so we accept Ethereum’s native cryptocurrency Ethereum (ETH) as payment. Therefore, some ETH need to have a convenient crypto wallet.
There are many crypto wallets that already have millions of users. Many of them have a variety of features, some with their own mobile applications and browser extensions for easy access to blockchain-based platforms.
Choosing the right cryptocurrency wallet depends on what kind of security you have. Their main types include storage, non-storage, and hardware wallets. Storage wallets are also known as hosted wallets because your funds are automatically stored by a third party, much like a bank stores money in a check or savings account.
It is considered to be the most user-friendly and easy to set up. Unmanaged wallets provide users with full control over cryptographic security and are independent of third parties to keep their funds secure. A hardware wallet, also known as a cold wallet, is a physical device that can keep a user’s encryption offline and protect it in the worst-case scenario of someone’s computer being hacked.
How to sell digital art as an NFT
Selling NFTs can be an endpoint for NFT minting. Most NFT platforms have the ability to choose how to sell or set the price of the NFT when creating the NFT.
Currently, fixed price sales and auctions are the two main ways to sell NFTs. Fixed-price sales are considered to be the easiest, as well as fairly transparent and direct method. To sell a freshly made NFT this way, just specify the price to sell. On some platforms, you will be asked to set a percentage of royalties. This is the amount you will receive for future sales of art. So be careful with that.
Another way to sell NFTs is to allow buyers to view and bid on digital art through auctions. Some auctions are online only, while others end with a full-fledged live auction. There are usually two types.
The first type is the English auction, which is a price increase auction that ultimately wins the highest bid. Timed auctions are a specific form of English auction in which the NFT can bid over a defined period of time and the collector who last submitted the highest bid wins the bid. The second type is a Dutch auction. This is a discounted auction where the price goes down until someone buys your NFT.
It’s up to you to choose how to sell your NFT. Each method has its strengths and weaknesses, whether you may not understand the true value of the artwork when setting a fixed price, or whether it depends on time while selling at auction.