While preparing a PDF about NFT programming, I have tried minting NFTs on a few platforms to get a feel for it.
I took the point of view of someone who wishes to create NFTs -as opposed to a collector or a buyer. The takeaways are summarised in this post. More details to come later in the full pdf.
The angle is rather technical -I don’t have a gaming nor art background, with a view to grasp capabilities of existing platforms in order to eventually understand when implementing smart contracts by hand makes sense.
Most platforms require a crypto wallet installed in your browser to authenticate, sign transactions and sometimes pay for gas fees. The most common wallet is Metamask. The wallet may be different depending on the chain you are targeting and usually requires you to own some crypto in order to create anything. Only a few rare platforms accept credit card payments instead of crypto.
Some clarifications about gas
Gas fees are a mechanism part of Ethereum design to prevent Denial of Service attacks against the network. Although Ethereum is distributed across thousands of machines, the whole system behaves as a single-core CPU running a single-threaded process. Just like Windows 3.1. Except it doesn’t freeze up like Windows 3.1 used to.
If email had gas fees, there would be no such thing as spam or phishing because it would be too costly for spammers to spam.
Gas units
The price of Ethereum operations is measured in gas units. For instance a standard ETH transfer from one address to another costs 21000 gas units. Execution of smart contracts cost more.
Gas price
Gas price is the price in ETH of a single gas unit. It is usually quoted in gwei (10-9 ETH or one billionth ETH). At the time of writing (10 July 2022), gas price is hovering around 10 gwei, which is historically cheap.
gas price = base fee + fee tip
Ethereum mining nodes prioritise transactions based on fee tips, a bit like a bouncer in a VIP club that would allow you to jump the queue if you paid something on top of the entrance ticket. The gas price also depends on network congestion (Ethereum block usage), which determines the base fee. In the end the total cost to enter the club depends on two components:
how many people are queuing (base fee)
how keen you are to jump the queue (fee tip)
The fee tip is within your control, the base fee is not. Most wallets usually quote gas prices for three priority levels (low, standard, high). More on the gas fee topic here.
Transaction fees
Transaction fees are calculated by multiplying the cost of one operation in gas units by the gas price.
For instance a standard ETH transfer has a fixed cost of 21000 gas units. As of 10 July 2022, gas price is 10 gwei. Therefore an ETH transfer costs 21000 * 10 = 210000 gwei. Assuming an ETH price of USD1187, this is about USD0.25.
Ethereum gas price varies with the time of day. For some reason it tends to be low around European lunchtime:
Main takeaways
Before diving into the details of the research, some observations:
Chain support
The set of chains supported by a platform is an important factor. Any platform that supports Ethereum only and nothing else will incur significant gas fees.
Wallets
Using another chain than Ethereum or Polygon means buyers will not be able to use Metamask and might have to install a wallet specific to the targeted chain, which may add friction.
Polygon
Polygon has the advantage of full Metamask support and low gas fees. From the NFT creator’s point of view, Polygon appears as a completely different chain distinct from Ethereum. Under the hood it’s actually a Proof-of-Stake side-chain attached to Ethereum. Does this mean it is less secure than Ethereum? Will NFTs minted on Polygon last as long as the Ethereum blockchain? This is unclear. However if long-term survival of the NFT is not a priority, then it’s a very good option because transaction fees paid in MATIC are very cheap.
What about Bitcoin?
ERC721 and ERC1155 were created within the Ethereum environment. Most of the trading volume takes place on Ethereum. However, Bitcoin is still the most secure, time-tested and future-proof chain. Therefore if priority is not to sell the NFT but instead maximise the chances that it is still around in one hundred years, then it makes sense to consider what can be done on Bitcoin.
Here is an example of marketplace for Stacks.
planning to experiment with Bitcoin NFTs in the future
Platforms Summary
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