Haphazard Forays into NFT Listings
It has been a big first quarter for the Crypto-Community. Not only have we seen Bitcoin reach just shy of $64,000 per coin (anyone else out there excited for the Coinbase IPO tomorrow…), but for those who HODL’d XRP instead of caving, we are particularly pleased to see that Ripple will be filing a motion to dismiss the first amended complaint against them, with prejudice. In no small comparison to the behemoth gains that the crypto-markets have been experiencing of late, enter the three-lettered acronym ‘NFT’ that has been littering our LinkedIn feeds and, surprisingly enough, found its way into my living room a few weeks ago when I was watching the morning news on NBC.
NFT’s, for the most part, have only been an abstract concept to me, which I had largely associated with the freaks and geeks who are into crypto-kitties and the like. They had been filed in my brain alongside ‘video games,’ ‘sports’ and ‘Game of Thrones’ — all things that people like, that I understand (sort of), but have never quite gotten into. However, if my favorite morning newscasters are speaking about NFT’s, and my interest had not been piqued solely by some article that I had read on a fringe research site, I decided that it was time for me to understand what exactly was going on here.
So, let’s get into it. NFT stands for ‘Non-fungible token.’ Tokens, in this field, are digital representations of value and when paired with the capabilities that a blockchain offers in terms of trust, utilizing a token is akin to being able to hold something valuable, that is incapable of being counterfeited or stolen (unless through your own error). This article explores how I listed my first NFT’s and should not be interpreted as the only way to navigate NFT listings. This was, truly, a haphazard foray as the title to this article states.
Step 1 — Decide what it is you are going to tokenize. In my case, this took the form of a series of photographs of old Soccer cards that my long-suffering husband had painstakingly collected as a pseudo-grom circa California 1994. With the same degree of angst that the folder these cards were being held hostage in had, I began photographing the cards.
Step 2 — Create an OpenSea account. This part was pretty standard for the most part. Follow the prompts and you shouldn’t run into any issues.
Step 3 — OpenSea integrates with MetaMask, and you will need to install the browser extension in order to get any further in this endeavor. MetaMask is an ETH wallet and you will have to fund this wallet either by purchasing ETH directly through MetaMask, or by transferring from another Ethereum Wallet to your MetaMask wallet. If you are not crypto-literate, this is a good time to remind you to never, ever, ever, lose your seed phrase (12 words in succession) that you get when you open up your MetaMask wallet. This is also a good time to reiterate that you need to always remember the phrase “not my keys, not my crypto.’ What this refers to is having access to both your public and private keys when working with digital assets. Never give anyone your private keys.
Step 4 — Now you have the OpenSea account and the extension to MetaMask is working, you can start creating your folder which essentially operates as a storefront. At this stage, you have not paid anything, but you will shortly. To have your folder validated by OpenSea (and thus visible to the public), you will have to make sure that you meet several requirements. These include but are not limited to, having a cover photo for your store and having a Twitter account. This was probably the most difficult part as I had a tough time trying to make the shop banner that I had designed fit into the requisite space. I had also forgotten about Twitter. But once I had these up and running, my account was validated and I could start uploading my individual items for sale.
Step 5 — Listing the items. A legal question arises and I am open to hearing from any IP experts with an interest in tokenization. Would a person own the rights to a digital representation of a product that they owned in tangible form, if the tangible product was purchased at a time when a digital representation, capable of being virtually traded, was not even a consideration yet, and you can find no evidence contrary to the belief that you would own the digital representation thereof?
I start listing every card (uploading the photo’s that I took) and description. I cannot remember if it is at this stage that you will pay the ‘gas’ fees for the account or whether it was actually before, but at some stage, you will pay OpenSea from Metamask using ETH. At the time, the gas cost about $80. That is, however, the only time that you will pay. All additional signing’s that you make using the wallet will not be charged. I have not researched how this works yet but I suspect that the actual listings are being signed on a side-chain, with the original storefront transaction confirmation being the only on-chain transaction. Does anyone know how this works and can you shed some light, please?
Step 6 — You start clicking through the individual items you have uploaded, you set the price either by using the auction tool or by setting a fixed price. I tried both out for fun. At this stage, the items are digitally minted, you confirm every transaction by signing on MetaMask, and you watch the world flock to your NFT store to buy your treasures.
Jokes.
Step 7- Sit down and acknowledge that you have not made an overnight fortune and that your digital storefront requires marketing skills just like any other store. These are skills that I do not have. Long story short, I have not given up on this new hobby and a few NFT types have entertained me enough to want to keep playing around and creating. For instance, there are plenty of free pixelated drawing boards on the internet that enable you to create Sprites as easily as you would convert to pdf, with nothing more than a stylus pen and an imagination.
Being a fan of levity, I have been dazzled by a collection of ‘Crypto-Karen’s’ on offer — no two the same, only 1000 made, thank God! Karen 5 of 1000 doesn’t know what gluten is but she knows that it is bad, Karen 117 has told you that you are “so well-spoken,” and Karen 164 didn’t put her shopping cart back. Check them out here https://twitter.com/crypto_karens
In closing, it was fun to figure out how this works, and an important technical exercise into seeing how the wallet to platform integration operates. Although it has been revealed that I am no more of an artist in the digital world than I am in the real world, this experiment proved fruitful in that when real artists want to mint and list their art, I could probably help them do that.
Keep figuring weird stuff out!
