I opened my eyes, mind still foggy from a rare 12-hour sleep, and began checking my email out of habit. That's when I saw Paragraph announcing an integration with highligh.xyz, a no-code NFT creation tool. I jumped out of bed to test this function right away.

Here's what I did

I navigated to the token page as per the instruction.

A bit of confusion here: Why do they call it "Create a token" not "Create an NFT"? How would a user know if the token here is referring to ERC-721, not ERC-20?

Click on the "Create a token" button anyway.

Then you will see this page:

I hesitated for a while on which blockchain to choose. Mainnet? Polygon? Goerli? Mumbai? How would a user know which one to choose?

I suppose I'll choose a testnet. Goerli it is. I filled in the rest of the page without much hesitation since this was a test run.

Click "Deploy on Goerli" and wait for the transaction to go through.

After 1-2 minutes, the token was successfully deployed. The speed was fairly fast and successful on the first try. Hooray! In the past, I've had to wait longer times or ask for debugging using other sites.

Click on "View mint page" and check out your beautiful creation.

Then, I copied the URL and pasted it on the top of this post. Everything's working perfectly on the first try and I'm beginning to believe in cryptocurrency again.

What I'm still unsure about is how I will use this function in my newsletter. For me, this isn't about making money from every single post I produce. I don't want to make an NFT just to sell it. I want to use it meaningfully, in a way that respects my readers and their time and money.

What does this mean for writers?

Non-fungible tokens offer writers a whole new way to monetize their writings.

Essentially, their work is now a digitally collectible asset. Writers can set the price they deem appropriate for their content while fostering a sense of scarcity and exclusivity around it.

Each post is unique, has an inherent value, and can be gifted, traded, or used as a "prerequisite" to view future content.

A lot of times when I read something I really enjoyed on Substack, I did want to reward the writers for producing great work. But subscribing to a blog is quite a monetary commitment. People would be inclined to just pay one time and forget about it.

Perhaps there will be fewer starving artists in the not-so-distant future. In addition to that, writers will be empowered to create work that is meaningful to them and their readers.