What is an NFT marketplace?

Been seeing weird digital art files of monkeys online lately? You might be a Bowie fan and heard mutterings of 12,000 digital cards being released for purchase soon. Or maybe you read about the Nyan Cat meme being sold for an absurd amount of money. 

However you found out about this booming NFT trend that’s been happening for a while now) and shows no signs of slowing down at all), what you might not be across yet is what you need to do if you want to buy, sell, and mint (create) them yourself. 

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though; there are a few people out there who might’ve read to this point and are thinking to themselves ‘What the heck is an NFT?’. If you’re one of those people, don’t worry – we’ve got you!

A quick rundown of NFTs

An NFT, which stands for Non-Fungible Token, is a unique digital file that, once purchased, becomes the property of the purchaser. There are a number of different NFT file types being offered including digital art, music, short video clips, in-game items, memes and even fashion pieces. NFTs can actually also represent the ownership of tangible, real-world items like real estate, cars, art and more.

These virtual tokens are stored on blockchains, the most popular currently being the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain. Unlike cryptocurrency they aren’t able to be bought, sold or traded on either centralised or decentralised crypto exchanges but platforms that have been specifically created as NFT marketplaces.

Understanding the basics of an NFT marketplace

Now we’re all on the same page about what NFTs are, let’s get into what can be done within an NFT marketplace.

Buying

As you’d imagine, once you’ve signed yourself up for an account at whichever NFT marketplace you choose you’re free to purchase any of them that are being sold within said marketplace. This might be via an auction, a ‘buy it now’ fixed price setting or even submitting offers to owners and entering into negotiations one-on-one.

Selling

If you have one or more NFT to sell, it can prove a little bit trickier than the buying process due to the fact that everything needs to be verified true for the buyers’ benefit. This rings even more true if you’re looking to sell something you’ve created yourself which hasn’t yet been bought and sold on the marketplace.

Step one is uploading the digital asset to the marketplace and deciding the method you’d like to go with to sell (fixed price or auction). Then the marketplace needs to determine its authenticity and verify it. Once this is completed successfully, it hits the market to be sold. Finally, once buyer and seller come to an agreed-upon price the platform initiates the transfer of the NFT to the seller.

Minting

Perhaps even more tricky is the process involved in creating or ‘minting’ your own NFT. Using the leading NFT system ETH, as an example, you first need to get yourself an ETH wallet like Coinbase or MetaMask, which provides support specifically for ERC-721 which is ETH’s open standard for NFTs. Also make sure you’ve got enough coins to cover the cost of any potential fees you’ll need to pay. 

After all that, it’s time to head to the platform of your preference to mint your very own NFT!

What you need to access a marketplace

Although they are essentially the eBay or Amazon of NFTs, these marketplaces can be a little more confusing to access and use. In order to get involved in buying, selling and minting NFTs, you’ll need the following:

• An account: You’ll of course need to set up an account first and foremost on whichever marketplace you’re intending to use.
• Crypto wallet: It’s important to go with a wallet that works with the particular blockchain that supports the type(s) of NFTs you’re looking to buy. Different blockchains will only accept certain wallet types, so be sure to do your research.
• Coins in your wallet: Having a reasonable amount of crypto in your wallet is important first because there are fees that might need to be paid if you’d like to sell or mint an NFT and second for purchasing ability. Check to make sure the crypto you put into your wallet is supported by the marketplace.

Options for NFT blockchains

The amount of NFTs available on ETH makes it far and away the most popular blockchain system for minting, buying and selling NFTs. But due to the continuing rise in popularity of NFTs, there are more alternatives hitting the market all the time. Some of the more serious players currently are:

• Solana
• Tron
• Binance
• Polkadot
• Flow
• Cosmos
• EOS

Different types of marketplaces for NFTs

You may not be aware of this, but different NFT marketplaces will offer different file types available. Some are purely for one type of NFT like digital art or music while others include several. Here are some of the more popular options and what you’ll find on them.

Mintable: Jump onto the Mintable NFT marketplace and you’ll find a good variety including digital art, domain names, photography, templates, videos and games.

Rarible: The Rarible marketplace has everything from digital art, music and games through to metaverse, photography and memes.

OpenSea: As one of the more widely-used NFT marketplaces, OpenSea has a wide variety available such as digital art, games, domain names, music, sports, virtual worlds and collectibles.

Sorare: Here you’ll find collectible digital trading cards – specifically for soccer players. You then use your cards to build a team and play an online game of fantasy league.

Nifty Gateway: A neat, well-presented NFT marketplace that offers digital art and collectibles.

Skip the confusion and speak with Mooning

We know. Even after an in-depth explanation like the above, NFT marketplaces can still leave you like ‘…. what?!’

That’s why we’re here though. Our team has a huge amount of experience with all the intricacies involved in buying, selling and minting NFTs on various marketplaces and will do the same for you, achieving the best results every time.

We’ve also got a network of top-quality NFT creators available at our fingertips as well as highly talented social media experts with the knowledge to create intense hype and online community engagement with your new NFT collection.

So what are you waiting for? Give us a call now on 1300 818 435 or message us online to take a giant leap towards NFT marketing success.