minting a single nft
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Brian Picciano
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static/src/_posts/2021-12-01-minting-a-single-nft.md
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static/src/_posts/2021-12-01-minting-a-single-nft.md
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---
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title: >-
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Minting A Single NFT
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description: >-
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Harder than I'd thought it'd be.
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tags: tech art crypto
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---
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In a [previous post][prev] I made a page to sell some NFTs I had designed. I say
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"designed", not "made", because the NFTs don't actually exist yet.
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On [OpenSea](https://opensea.io), where those NFTs are listed, the NFT isn't
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actually "minted" (created) until first sale. This is primarily done to save the
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artist the cost of minting an NFT which no one else is going to buy. There might
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be a way to mint outside of a sale on OpenSea, but I haven't dug too much into
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it because it doesn't matter.
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It doesn't matter because a primary goal here is to not go broke. And OpenSea is
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primarily on Ethereum, a blockchain that can't actually be used by normal people
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because of the crazy fees. There are some L2s for it, but I don't have any set
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up, and keeping an NFT in an L2 feels like borrowed time.
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So, as an initial test, I've printed an NFT on Solana, using
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[Holaplex][hola]. Solana because it's cheap and fast and
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wonderful, and Holaplex because... a lot of reasons.
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The main one is that other projects, like [SolSea](https://solsea.io/) and
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[AlphaArt](https://www.alpha.art/), require a sign-up just to print NFTs. And
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not a crypto signup, where you just connect a wallet. But like a real one, with
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an email. [Solanart](https://solanart.io/) requires you to contact them
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privately through discord to mint on them!
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Why? NFTs are a weird market. A lot of these platforms appear to the
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~~customer~~ user more like casino games than anything, where the object is to
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find the shiny thing which is going to get popular for one whimsical reason or
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another. The artists get paid, the platform takes a cut, and whoever minted the
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NFT prays.
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For reasons involving the word "rug", the artist, the one who is attaching their
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work to an NFT, is not necessarily to be trusted. So there's a lot of mechanisms
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within the Solana NFT world to build trust between the audience and the artist.
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Things like chain-enforced fair auctions (open to everyone at the same time) and
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gatekeeping measures are examples.
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Which is all well and good, but I still couldn't mint an NFT.
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## Metaplex
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So I tried another tact: self-hosting. It's like, my favorite thing? I talk
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about it a lot.
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I attempted to get [Metaplex][meta] set up locally. Metaplex is an organization,
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associated with Solana Labs in some way I think, that's helped develop the NFT
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standard on Solana. And they also develop an open-source toolkit for hosting
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your own NFT store, complete with NFT minting with no fees or other road blocks.
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Sounds perfect!
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Except that I'm not a capable enough javascript developer to get it running. I
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got as far as the running the Next server and loading the app in my browser, but
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a second into running it spits out some error in the console and nothing works
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after that. I've spent too much time on it already, I won't go into it more.
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So metaplex, for now, is out.
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## Holaplex
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Until I, somehow, (how actually though...?), found [Holaplex][hola]. It's
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a very thinly skinned hosted Metaplex, with a really smooth signup process which
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doesn't involve any emails. Each user gets a storefront under their own
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subdomain of whatever NFTs they want, and that's it. It's like geocities for
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NFTs; pretty much the next best thing to self-hosted.
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But to mint an NFT you don't even need to do that, you just hit the "Mint NFTs"
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button. So I did that, I uploaded an image, I paid the hosting fee ($2), and
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that was it!
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You can view my first NFT [here][ghost]! It's not for sale.
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I'm hoping that one day I can get back to Metaplex and get it working, I'd much
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prefer to have my store hosted myself. But at least this NFT exists now, and I
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have a mechanism to make other ones for other people.
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[prev]: {% post_url 2021-10-31-dog-money %}
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[meta]: https://www.metaplex.com/
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[hola]: https://holaplex.com/
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[ghost]: https://solscan.io/token/HsFpMvY9j5uy68CSDxRvb5aeoj4L3D4vsAkHsFqKvDYb
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