The process of creating NFTs or non-fungible tokens for free may sound complicated—like some cyberspace gobbledygook— but it’s as simple as 1-2-3. Well, not exactly in three steps, but all that one needs to make and sell an NFT—a digital file on a cryptocurrency blockchain—is a few online components such as a crypto wallet, currency, an online marketplace, and one is good to go.
To create an NFT, one needs to have a crypto wallet account on any NFT marketplace. In India, users can choose software currency wallets such as Metamask and Coinbase (just as we have the choice to use PayTM or GooglePay or PhonePe for financial transactions).
When creating a wallet account, the user gets a 12-word ‘seed phrase’, which serves as the password. Like with all other financial PINs and passwords, one has to keep it safe and not share the security code.
Once the account is up and about in Metamask with details such as name, user ID, bio and photograph, one has to link it to one’s Rarible account, a space in the digital art gallery or marketplaces where NFT owners can flaunt their collections and put them up for sale. This is similar to putting up your artwork in a gallery, except that your artwork is in the form of NFT and the gallery is a virtual shop.
Linking the Metamask and Rarible accounts ensure that the NFTs appear in the wallet and all transactions are easily completed. Tweak Metamask’s settings to enable automatic NFT transactions.
A Rarible account is like your social media account. One must populate it with information and visuals using a banner image and links to social media accounts. This makes one’s art visible to the world. One can create a piece of art using Rebelle 5, a painting software that helps create oil, acrylic, watercolour, and wet and dry media artworks. Save the artwork as a jpeg to upload it to the new NFT marketplace account and mint it as an NFT.
Minting an NFT means publishing a unique digital asset on a blockchain so that it can be bought, sold and traded. To upload the artwork, click the ‘create’ tab in the top right of your account and continue. However, this may take 48 hours or more to show up on your page, as NFT marketplaces take usually take two days to verify your credentials. One can upload artwork, music files, videos or even a meme. NFT marketplaces are content-agnostic.
The next step is to choose a blockchain on Rarible. While Ethereum has been one of the oldest and most used blockchain platforms, there are other options such as Polygon and Solana, which are new players in the market. Next is to decide the value and type of NFT one is creating.
For example, choose Single to create a one-off unique NFT or Multiple to mint a series of NFTs to create a collection. Set the price, add a name and description, and make sure you switch Free Minting to ‘On’. Users have to typically pay gas fee—the cost of transacting on the blockchain to mint an NFT.
However, one can choose Free Minting in which users you don’t have to pay the platform but will pass on the gas fee to the buyer. It is reasonable that you lower your asking price to anticipate the cost, or mint your NFT as an auction and let the buyer decide.
On Rarible, when the NFT is minted, celebratory digital confetti explodes on the screen, marking culmination of the process.
Through free minting, one can create an NFT for free, but remember that NFT marketplaces make ‘normal’ NFTs more visible compared to the free versions. The onus of giving it visibility about it lies with the user. Happy free NFT-ing.
Rarible accounts ensure that the NFTs appear in the wallet and all transactions are easily
completed. Tweak Metamask’s settings to enable automatic NFT transactions.