The NFT Handbook

CHAPTER 6Creating and Minting NFTs

In this chapter, we’ll go through, step by step, creating an NFT and minting it (putting it on the blockchain) from scratch. Even if you’re a complete noob, you can do it. No prior NFT, blockchain, or technical experience is necessary. So, get ready to join the NFT craze.

The main steps for doing this are as follows:

• Creating the main content and other aspects of your NFT
• Creating a cryptocurrency wallet (specifically a MetaMask wallet)
• Creating an account on OpenSea (the largest NFT marketplace)
• Creating a collection on OpenSea
• Minting your NFT on OpenSea

To keep the process as simple as possible, let’s focus on creating a digital art NFT, the most popular type of NFT.

Creating the Aspects of Your NFT

The first step is to create all of the aspects of your NFT. NFTs can have all of the following aspects, as covered in Chapter 2, “What Are NFTs?”:

• Main content
• Name
• Preview content
• Description
• Traits
• Unlockable content
• Perks
• Ongoing royalty
• Supply
• External link

We’ll go through each, one by one, but not in that order.

Main Content

This is the first and foremost step to creating your NFT, as the main content is the heart of your NFT.

Projects such as Meebits use images of 3D characters as their main content, with buyers able to unlock the actual 3D files once they own the Meebit (more on unlockable content later). Created by the people at Larva Labs, known for CryptoPunks, Meebits are 20,000 artificial intelligence (AI)–generated characters ...