When getting started in the world of Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) there are few things you will need to get going.
First, get a wallet. The sites you will likely use to sell your NFTs work as peer-to-peer exchanges. I use Formatic, but there are a number of options, including Metamask, that are not too complicated to set up.
Second, buy some ether to pay for “gas fees.”
I started with the site Rarible. Rarible is a great site but you do have to pay a gas fee each time you want to place an NFT for sale. Etherem.org describes a gas fee as follows: “Gas refers to the fee required to successfully conduct a transaction on Ethereum. In essence, gas fees are paid in Ethereum’s native currency, ether (ETH). Gas prices are denoted in Gwei, which itself is a denomination of ETH – each Gwei is equal to 0.000000001 ETH (10-9 ETH).”
Aside from art work itself, a wallet and some ether are the basics to get started.
I “minted” a song and placed it on Rarible for a $75 gas fee. I paid this price because I was interested to see the process for myself. But assuming you don’t sell your NFT, that fee can be prohibitive. In retrospect I wish I did take some more time and create new work to be minted, but it was still a good learning process.
A second option to faciliate selling your NFTs is OpenSea.
OpenSea is described as, “The world’s largest digital marketplace for crypto collectibles and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), including ERC721 and ERC1155 assets. Buy, sell, and discover exclusive digital assets like Axies, ENS names,CryptoKitties, Decentraland, and more.”
One continuous series I have on OpenSea is my “Four Guitars” series. Here are some of the listings:
I also have started to make NFTs out of my poems from the book “Morning.” By taking the text of the poem, and using only the black text as my crosshatching, a physical image of the poem starts to emerge.
I don’t know what will happen with this NFT craze but, for me, since I create these images anyway, I want to see what the potential is. If you are a collector definitely do your research before purchasing anything. There is a verification process on Rarible but there have been reports of scam accounts. Some artists have seen their work turned into NFTs without their permission. If you are an artist you should stay up date on NFTs and scan these sites to make sure there is no unapproved use of your work.
Personally, I’m excited to see where this goes. Either way, I’ll keep creating.
