My journey into the NFT world as an artist.

Many articles and videos explain what NFTs are, so like everyone I read a few articles that explain what NFTs are and what are their uses. But after that there is so much information out there in web3 space that it can be overwhelming at first, I felt overwhelmed. This is the reason I decided to document my journey and will add new entries as I learn new things in web 3.

Blockchain and Marketplace

The first time I heard about NFTs I thought only Ethereum blockchain supports the NFTs but as I learned about these different blockchains support NFTs.

Currently, I’m active on Ethereum and Tezos but there are others like Solana, Cardano, etc. So for now I’ll talk about Ethereum and Tezos NFT marketplaces

Ethereum marketplace includes the Polygon as it is just a different layer in Ethereum. The main difference is Polygon has low gas fees and you need MATIC to purchase Polygon NFTs. Yes, the gas fee is exactly what it sounds like, we need gas to make a transaction(where the gas is in ETH). The gas fee varies depending on the demand and the complexity of the transaction.

The marketplaces I know so far are OpenSea, Zora, Rarible, Foundation, SuperRare, and LooksRare. I’ll not talk about what is best but I’ll share my experience using them. I’ve excluded Foundation and Super Rare as they are invite-only.

OpenSea and Rarible support lazy minting, it means you don’t need any ETH to mint and list the NFT. The person who is buying the NFT will pay the minting costs. I have minted a couple of NFTs this way on Rarible.

All you need to do is upload an image, audio, or video and add a description then choose how many editions you want to sell be it 1 or 20 or 100 then choose creator royalties(the royalties you receive if the buyer sell the NFT in the secondary market) then mint it. Now, you can list the NFT on the marketplace for the amount of your liking. OpenSea ask for a one time transaction when listing your first NFT(gas fee).

Zora on the other hand is slightly different, you should mint your NFT on blockchain before you can list it. Minting the NFT on the blockchain requires a gas fee and the required fee varies depending on the demand. After minting the NFT to list it on Zora you should pay gas again. The gas fee also varies depending on the complexity of the transaction, listing the NFT requires less gas than minting the NFT. You can mint your NFT anywhere and can list that NFT for sale on Zora.

Zora doesn’t collect any fee from your sale. OpenSea, Rarible, and LooksRare collect 2-2.5% from the sale. On all platforms, if you want to cancel your listing, you should pay the gas fee. Again the fee depends on the complexity of the transaction for this it’s usually lower than the gas required for listing the NFT.

Tezos is similar but the gas fee is very minimal that you hardly notice it. Some of the platforms where you can buy/sell Tezos NFTs are hic et nunc, objkt, and versum. Minting experience on Tezos is similar to minting NFT on Ethereum.

My preference for wallets

Ethereum- Rainbow

Tezos- Kukai