I am documenting my experience. Just in case you are in the same boat as I was. If you want to dip your toes in the NFT world, follow along.

What you need:

1. Crypto Wallet – Wallet is the biggest hump IMO standing between you and your NFT. Once you get that (and the right one – mind you!) then the rest of the journey gets much easier

2. Set a Budget – This is not a mandatory step. However, I wanted to have some self-discipline. There is a massive selection when it comes to NFTs. The price ranges from zero (but you pay the gas fees – more on that later) all the way to 7 figures and counting so it’s better to have a budget. Especially if it’s your first time.

3. Buy your asset – This could be your ENS .eth and/or your NFT

Wallet

This ^ is just a short list of growing crypto wallets available today.

1. I tried Coinbase Wallet but found their reach to be low. Honestly I was shocked to see that for an existing customer (I have a Coinbase account since ’17) it wasn’t integrated or low friction. So that was quickly out for me

2. Then I tried Moonpay - It was too high friction. Putting my risk hat on I could see why they were doing that. However, I felt that was unnecessary. My thoughts summarized in the tweet below.

   https://twitter.com/truptinatu/status/1471711245698879490?s=20

3. Next I tried Metamask. It just clicked because it was easy to get onboarded and low friction.

I recommend MetaMask (app + browser extension) since it has a wide integration and is extremely low friction.

There are two ways you could go about creating an account.  Metamask is supported via browser and app but I highly recommend that you start with the app, especially if it’s your first time.  Honestly I found the app version for Metamask experience smooth as butter and that’s because it supports Apple Pay - extremely frictionless. Metamask + iPhone + app = ApplePay load boom! You can always connect via browser later on once you have the account and everything is set-up. App is just very easy when it comes to load the money in your wallet. I couldn't recommend it more. USD <> ETH Buy some ETH with your USD amount you have set in step 2 as your budget. It will probably be fractional share and that’s not only allowed but also will be plenty for this exercise.

If you want a step by step guide to get Metamask wallet it’s here

Other wallet options are -

• Rainbow with a nicer UI.

  Rainbow or mobile and metamask for browsers are what some people recommended. (Not something I have tried

• Trust Wallet was also recommended . It has a native web3 browser making web3 things easier.

Of course like doing anything in the crypto world, save your seed phrase SAFELY and do not share it with anyone.

Once you have the wallet, the biggest step is done.

Woohoo! – you are almost there.

Budget

Make sure your Budget = Asset (NFT) price + 20-30% for gas (these can get really steep)

I started with loading my wallet with $500 equivalent of ETH and that was just enough to buy my asset + gas.

These prices fluctuate so bear that in mind as well.

Pick a NFT

For me, I follow Frank Rotman on twitter. He had once posted about this new and upcoming owl council NFT that he bought & is involved with. I thought a trusted source is posting something that actually looks reasonable and is in my budget, their roadmap also has some utility so I bought one of the owls & I am happy with it.

Here are some I recommend as first NFTs (reasonably priced & not scams)

• Enlightened Owl:  Discord &Twitter

• Nifkey: If you have a Twitter account then you might want this handshake

• Friend Tree: https://www.plantfriendtree.com/

• Crypto Coven

ENS

Buying your .eth / ENS is an NFT in itself. Think of ENS like domain names - it was a one-time process but you had to buy it and set-up the DNS . This is kind of like that - once you do the handshake between ENS and your Ethereum wallet you don’t have to share your alphanumeric address you can just share trupti.eth in people’s twitter replies for the next airdrop. It’s that simple.

https://app.ens.domains/faq

Gas fees

This is confusing for a lot of people, but gas fees are nothing but the fees that you're paying for miners who are minting these transactions on the blockchain in real time. I think the best analogy I could think of was like Wikipedia: if you edited a page in Wikipedia immediately the edits won't show up it has to go through a council & auditors and after everyone agrees it shows up on the website. Another analogy is Uber prices - the more drivers that are out driving your ride is cheap but if there is inclement weather or it's late & there are very few drivers but there is a lot of demand you see a surge in pricing. Just make sure that you account for that when you set your budget. If you really find this a deterrent, then I’d recommend checking at different hours of the day or week and you might get something in your range.

Priority: By default it’s set at medium priority. If you are not in any hurry or deem this as a sensitive transaction then feel free to set it to low and save some on gas. (It takes a tad bit longer but I haven’t had any issues)

My overall thoughts

It definitely felt more daunting than it turned out to be. That was because there is no How-to ^ guide that hand holds you and tells you all there is to know. I had to watch a bunch of youtube videos, read blogs, try things out. But once you figure that out & get a wallet things get easier. The rest is just like how you’d buy any other asset/item online.

Good luck!