To make an NFT, artists must not only create works, but also understand the process of minting an NFT. Gas fee is one of the important factors when minting NFTs. In other words, the gas fee is a fee that the creator or the one who made the NFTs must pay in exchange for the computational energy needed to process and validate transactions on the blockchain. So, to mint NFT works, you have to pay a fee to replace the miner’s computing resources on the blockchain. Ethereum 2.0, the upgrade of Ethereum, has yet to be launched so users still have to pay a rather high fee to mint NFTs.
However, those barriers did not negatively affect NFT minting but even motivated developers to come up with many solutions to reduce the cost of minting NFTs, smart contracts that allow mass minting ERC-721A, for example. A solution that has gained some success and is widely adopted by major NFT marketplaces is Lazy Mint. So what is Lazy Mint? Let’s find out in this post.
What is Lazy Mint?
Lazy Minting is a process in which the creator does not have to pay the gas fee for minting the NFT upfront, and they can list it on marketplaces for sale. Whenever a buyer buys the NFT, it is minted just in time, and the minting cost is added to the total cost of the NFT.
How to mint NFTs?
NFT mainly refers to a Non-Fungible token that contains references to digital files such as photos, video, or audios. The digital files are stored on a decentralized database so they cannot be modified or deleted. The process of converting digital files into crypto collections or digital assets stored on the blockchain is called mint.
Steps to mint NFTs:
- To mint NFT, of course, we need a smart contract. Currently, however, many protocols are available so that anyone can interact with smart contracts through friend interfaces.
- Users need to pay a gas fee to record information to blocks and then create NFTs.
- These NFTs can then be sold on marketplaces like Rarible or OpenSea.
Pros and Cons of Lazy Mint
Pros:
- Reduce the impact of gas fees: By shifting the gas fee payment to the buyer, high gas fees will no longer be an obstacle for new artists to release NFT collections.
- Lower the barrier for entry: As gas fees are no longer a deterrent, this will encourage artists to release NFTs as a new distribution channel for works.
Cons:
Loss of control: With Lazy Mint, when the NFTs are officially minted, or who will be able to mint those NFTs, will no longer be under the control of the artists. However, this can be improved in the future with new features.
How to mint NFTs on Rarible
Some marketplaces allow users to lazy mint, but the most popular can be mentioned as OpenSea and Rarible.
Here’s how to lazy mint on Rarible:
- Connect your ETH wallet to Rarible
- Click Create to create an NFT
- Select blockchain to mint NFT
- Select the number of NFTs you want to mint (Single or Multiple).
- Upload the file you want to convert to NFT and fill in the basic information. Remember to choose Free Mint (Lazy Mint) so you don’t have to pay mint fee
- Sign the (totally free) tx to verify.
So, you are finished creating NFTs for your works and then, your next task is to get people to buy your NFTs. The gas fee is paid after an NFT work is purchased and transferred “on-chain”.
In conclusion
Lazy Mint is an impactful technique that allows creators to create new NFTs at no cost. Have fun building something creative in the NFT space.
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