NFT for Dummies: Everything you need to know

by Breakout Team

May 4, 2022

For non-technical people, NFTs feel like mysterious technology that feels like an urban legend. Well, NFTs simply stand for non-fungible tokens. “Non-Fungible” means no one can replace it, having a unique identity of its own.

An NFT is an unique digital property that is attached with a blockchain to keep its identity unique and trace its transactions. It could be a piece of digital art or a digital recording of music, simply a meme or an online communication. As NFTs have a value assigned to it, they should be stored securely on blockchain-based ledgers.

In the digital space, an NFT is secured and stored on a public Blockchain. As we know that Tokens cannot be interchanged for another token nor can we divide it into lesser value tokens. Same way, non-fungible tokens cannot get stolen from the original holder.

Table of Contents

What you’ll need to get started with the NFTs?

If you want to mint your own NFT collection, buy or sell NFTs on the Web3; you will need these basic things to get started:

A Crypto wallet – for example, MetaMask
Crypto-currency in the wallet – to make a transaction. You can get the money in your wallet

NFT use cases

We talked a lot about what an NFT is and how to create an NFT collection. Let’s see some use cases of NFTs and embrace the new method of saving our digital art.

Digital Art: Converting digital art into NFTs allows easy transfer of ownership rights from one holder to another. Also, the entire transaction will get recorded on the blockchain – thus there won’t be a possibility of stealing.
Sports Collectibles: Special sports moments and sports items can get converted into NFT collections. NBA Top Shot, a platform that officially licenses and mint NFTs of NBA collections, has millions of dollars of sales and engagement for this new generation of enthusiasts.
Game Assets: in-game assets and collectibles are a great example of NFTs. From user skins to personalized profile pictures and themes, everything falling under the segment of game assets can be converted into NFTs.
Music: NFT is a boon for music artists. They can convert their digital art into non-fungible tokens. Back in February, 2021, DJ and producer 3LAU famously sold $12 million of NFTs on the internet. The offering included custom songs, access to exclusive music for owners and custom artworks.
Memes: one of the oldest and popular forms of NFTs are memes. Disaster girl, Nylon Cat, Noodle NFT or overly Attached Girlfriend, they all have created their own NFT collections and sold them for thousands of dollars on the internet.

Common NFT minting Standards

Most of the NFTs are created over the Ethereum blockchain and are widely accepted as a standard all over the world.

The ERC-721 standard is the primary and most commonly used non-functional token standard. Each NFT created with this token standard can be priced independently as well.

ERC-998 tokens allow developers to solve complex positions and trade rules using single transfer of token ownership.

They can also bundle several NFTs and fungible tokens like ERC-20 in a single smart contract. You might think of an ERC-998 token contract as a portfolio of assets or as a holding authority for your digital assets.

ERC-1155 tokens allow users to register fungible and non-fungible tokens using the same address and smart contract. This token standard was developed with games in mind, where fungible tokens could represent a transactional currency in a game and the non-fungible items could represent in-game collectibles or in-game exchangeable assets.

NFTs can also get minted on other popular blockchains, such as polygon or Solana. Some creators have also minted their NFTs Bitcoin blockchain in the form of colored coins, that have been used for various applications like issuing properties, stakes, coupons as well.

A guide on deploying NFT smart contract

Follow these steps to deploy your own ERC-721 token contract on Ethereum:

Log in to your crypto wallet from your web browser
Make sure you’ve selected the correct account and blockchain network (only use Ethereum to deploy your smart contract)
Point your browser to: http://remix.ethereum.org – Make sure to type in “http” and not “https”
Create and name a new file for your Solidity code.
Open a new file, and copy/paste the sample code provided at https://www.seoyoungkim.com/nftfdcode.html
Navigate to the Solidity Compiler browser pane and compile your code.
Navigate to the Deploy & Run Transactions browser pane and select Injected Web3 from the Environment dropdown menu.
Make sure you’re now connected to the appropriate network and account and deploy your compiled contract.

How to sell or trade NFTs – top 10 NFT marketplaces

Here is the list of top 10 NFT marketplaces to trade your NFT collection:

OpenSea: one of the largest peer-to-peer marketplaces to trade crypto-collectibles online. OpenSea comes with a lot of features to showcase and trade your NFTs on the platform.
Axie Marketplace: Axie Infinity game assets are primarily bought and sold on this platform.
CryptoPunks Marketplace: On CryptoPunks, unique 24×24 pixelated punks are distributed and traded for NFT collectors.
NBA Top Shot: As the name suggests, NBA Top Shot lets users trade licensed NBA moments on the platform.
Rarible: Rarible allows users to quickly create their own list of NFTs. It is one of the easiest ways to manage NFTs.
SuperRare: SuperRare serves a great purpose. It also gives a unique score to the user’s NFT collection to define its rarity.
Alcor: A decentralized exchange where users can buy NFTs, sell or display as well.
Binance NFT Marketplace: Who hasn’t heard about the Binance application? An application with a simple user interface and great features to trade your NFTs.
Foundation: A platform where creators can mint, auction and market their digital artwork for the world.
Crypto.com NFT Marketplace: Just like Binance, Crypto.com is also a famous platform to trade crypto currencies and NFTs with online users.