The non-fungible tokens have become increasingly popular over the past few years. The biggest reason behind it is the potential for artists to earn several millions of dollars from their own art in a digital form. That’s why we’re now listening about so many cases of selling an NFT, like a GIF or a Tweet, for incredible amounts of money.
For those who are beginners in the space of NFT, they might feel confused at first and wonder where to start with NFT programming, so we’ve decided to gather all information in one article to help you learn NFT development even though you’re at a beginner’s level.
Getting Started
Considering the demand for NFTs today, it’s pretty obvious why many developers are deciding to get started in this blockchain space. Because NFT is a new technology, many people wrongly assume it’s more complicated and difficult than it actually is. Nevertheless, it does have specific prerequisites, this technology is not that intimidating, not even for beginners.
These prerequisites imply that you have a good understanding of blockchain, smart contracts, DeFi, DApps, Web3, and more importantly, know how these ecosystems work. Also, you will need to understand how decentralized networks like Ethereum work, while also having explored numerous ways how to build on a platform like Ethereum. Not to mention that you will need to know programming languages such as JavaScript and Solidity.
#1 Create The NFT
When creating an NFT, whether it’s celebrities NFT or sports one or something else, keep in mind there are two NFT standards: ERC-721 and ERC-1155. When comparing these two, the latter is newer and has more features than ERC-721, such as more flexibility, the ability to both create and use fungible and non-fungible tokens, proceed with batch transfers, and so much more.
The first thing you’ll probably do is to create a smart contract. On the NFT platforms, you will find various libraries that facilitate the process of building smart contracts as they are quite reliable and tested for NFT development.
#2 Add Metadata & Find a Host
Before you go into adding metadata and finding the host, you will first need to have a clear understanding of the metadata structure for NFTs. When talking about the basic structure, it should involve at least the description, external URL, image, name, and attributes. On the NFT platform, you will be using, open a new folder and create a JSON file then. Once you have created a JSON string for your NFT.
The best way to host that JSON file you’ve just created is on Moralis, so make sure you get the URL to host your directory and create an account on Moralis, which is completely free. Once you have gone through all the steps, you will have everything ready to deploy.
Also, you can choose to add external URLs to add adequate attributions to your artwork or image. You can even easily add those attributes after the file was deployed by editing it and re-ploying as many times as you need.
ERC-1155 Standard
Going back to the ERC-1155 standard, you will need to have previous knowledge of JSON NFT files and hosts on the mentioned Moralis. This standard has a specific format for the JSON ERC-1155 strings. However, make sure you check the specifications for the ERC-1155 standard first, which can be found under string format. Typically, it requires 64 hexadecimal characters with no 0x prefix. In other words, you will be requested to modify the name of your original file and pad it up to 64 digits.
Then, you will need to rename the file. The NFT ID is a zero (“0”), so you can simply add 63 more zeros to get to 64 digits. This step is quite vital because everyone who queries the mentioned standard will query according to the explained specific schema.
When you have your file hosted on a chosen website, you will be able to proceed to deploy the smart contract you have created. This process can be repeated as many times as necessary. If you were wondering how to create and sell NFT but couldn’t find a comprehensive guide with all the instructions, now you have everything you need to do it on your own. Just make sure you follow these steps, and once you learn it, it will take you less and less time each time you do it.