Staying true to my desire to experiment and try new things firsthand, I minted my first NFT on the Solana Blockchain this week on SolSea. I decided to go to the Solana blockchain despite the Ethereum Blockchain’s popularity mainly to save on the cost of minting. Currently, the gas fees (the cost to transact on Ethereum) are very high–if I were expecting NFTs to be a big part of my professional life the investment to be on Ethereum now would be worth it. However, since I’m experimenting, albeit with the hope of it becoming a respected part of my professional portfolio, I felt it was made more sense to go the more cost-effective route. There’s also the potential for Solana to continue to grow and I catch a small benefit of being an early adopter.
I’ll share more about the process and what I’ve learned later…for example I accidentally minted this first NFT twice–I’ll eventually burn (get rid of) the duplicate so whoever collects this first one isn’t worried about a second one floating around. Overall, the process was fairly easy and should be encouraging for the creators out there.
I have some cool things I want to try with these NFTs. For now, I’ll continue to mint the illustrations I do each week for The Pursuit and sometimes the collector will have the opportunity to join me on an episode of The Pursuit–and maybe there will be some Pursuit gear given away with an NFT. Be sure to follow along on this experiment!
FYI: If you’ve never purchased and NFT or used Solana to purchase, you’ll want to take a look at the Phantom wallet which is what I use for Solana. If you’ve used ETH before, you’re probably familiar with MetaMask–Phantom is the same experience just for Solana.
Disclaimer: Nothing on this blog should be considered advice, or recommendations. If you have questions pertaining to your individual situation you should consult your financial advisor. For all of the disclaimers, please see my disclaimers page.
