This tutorial is aimed at beginners wishing to mint an NFT on the Phantasma blockchain. Note: it's very easy.
I made a video version of myself creating this NFT. I did it in almost real-time, so I fumble around a bit. But, I wanted to leave it as-is for others to see my mistakes and learn from them. Watch on 3speak.co or on lbry.tv.
The Back Story
I've minted NFTs on Ethereum (it's crazy expensive). And minted a bunch on WAX (crazy inexpensive and easy). I made a few video tutorials on this: 1. how to set up a WAX wallet and get your first free NFT (I give it to you) , 2. how to mint an NFT on WAX, and 3. how to mint a 2-sided NFT on WAX. It's also possible to make video/audio infused NFTs there, like this video NFT.
I heard about Phantasma, ironically, through a poll that it was not included on. The poll asked what the best blockchain was for NFTs. WAX was killing the poll. In the comments though, several people were adamant about Phantasma and wondered why it was not there. The poll creator acknowledged that Phantasma was a large and complex ecosystem and to include it only as an NFT platform was selling it short.
My interest was piqued.
I joined the Telegram channel and asked for good places to start. https://phantasma.info was mentioned, and it is indeed a good introduction.
I set up a wallet. Poltergeist appeared to be the "standard" one to go with. Back in Telegram, I asked if there were any freebie NFTs and left my address as well as my website to show my background. My post was quickly deleted by a mod. Fair enough...a newcomer begging and dropping links is generally not a good thing. I'd minted hundreds of NFTs on WAX and give away a ton of them (by the way, I'll give you one if you'd like at nefties.com/free). I thought it was okay to ask for something similar in the chat and offered to swap WAX NFTs for any Phantasma NFTs I might be gifted. My goal was simply to learn the Phantasma system.
After rephrasing things and reposting, with no address or links, A kind Telegram user offered to DM me some links. He did. He also sent some SOUL and KCAL to my new Phantasma address. Thank you again kind sir! I encouraged him to get a Wax Cloud Wallet, he did, and I sent some WAXP and four NFTs back to him. I read two articles he sent me (one and two), watched an interview he sent about the main dev, Vincent. This all looked very good.
Setting up the Wallet
As mentioned, I'd already downloaded and installed the Poltergeist wallet...very easy.
Step 1 - Get Tokens
As with many crypto projects, there's a bit of a chicken-and-egg issue here. To mint, you need some of the tokens, SOUL and KCAL. If you already had some NFTs, you could sell them to earn earn some tokens. However, you can't mint any NFTs to sell and earn tokens because you don't have any tokens to mint NFTs to sell. Hmm.
You can go onto a market and buy some SOUL and KCAL. It won't take much of either to get started.
Like I mentioned earlier, a kind “sponsor” gave me 2 SOUL and 200 KCAL. That was enough to crack the chicken-and-egg conundrum. Figure out the best way to get some SOUL and KCAL for yourself and begin.
My new wallet showed:
2 SOUL
200 KCAL
Good news! Literally while I was writing this on Feb. 2, 2021, a tip-bot was added to the Phantasma Telegram channel. I think the folks there recognize this chicken-egg situation. They just might tip you enough to get you started.
Step 2 - Stake and Name
Using Poltergeist, I staked the 2 SOUL that were gifted to me (one button click).
This allowed me to set up my wallet name as crrdlx. Now, instead of sending tokens or NFTs to my long Phantasma "crypto address" of P2KGwDQRDJwdVzvifC8ArStee6VvoUL6fh4yTCQnUW3eAUy, someone could simply send to my wallet "handle" of crrdlx. This was all very simple and intuitive on Poltergeist.
My wallet was now all set.
Step 3 - Link Your Wallet with GhostMarket
I opened up GhostMarket.io then linked my Poltergeist wallet using the top-right "Account" button. This went easily enough as I was used to doing something very similar with AtomicHub.io and the Wax Cloud Wallet. My SOUL and KCAL balances showed up in GhostMarket.
Step 4 - Click "Create NFT"
Click the "Create NFT" button up top. A form first asks for an image you wish to use to create your NFT. No doubt it accepts files like jpg or png or gif (I used a gif). I'm not sure about audio or video or other types of files.
Step 5 - Add Description and Attributes
Next, you type in a description of your NFT in the text box.
The "Attributes" section stumped me a bit. Since it was labeled as "Optional", I skipped it. Later, I did ask in Telegram. Vincent, the creator of GhostMarket, replied that attributes are metadata...additional information. This info gets built into the NFT, so to speak...it's stored on chain and follows the NFT around. The attributes ask for "Type" and "Value". Vincent explained that to achieve something like:
Author: Vincent
The "type" would be "Author", the "value" would be "Vincent"
He showed that attributes wind up looking like this:
So, yep, it's additional information.
Step 6 - Infuse NFT with Asset
It's possible to "infuse" a token or tokens into your NFT if you wish. This is like grandma putting a $5 bill in an envelope and sending it to you. The envelope is the NFT, infused with $5 inside.
Click the "Infuse..." button, a drop-down appears. You can choose from seven tokens (some on Phantasma, as well as NEO, or Ethereum chains) and whatever amount you wish to add to the NFT.
To access the infused token(s), the owner must "burn" the NFT. This burning release the token(s) to the owners wallet.
This is like tearing open grandma's envelope. The NFT-envelope is destroyed, but you gain access to the $5 inside.
This cross-chain capability is fantastic and way ahead of the game. No doubt this will be the norm in the future, but for now, Phantasma is on the leading edge here.
Step 7 - List on the Market (if you wish)
If you wish, you can put your NFT on the market as soon as it's minted by checking "Marketplace Listing." I'm imagine you could not do this if you want to keep it for yourself. I also imagine sure there's the ability to list it on the market later if you decide to do so.
I went ahead and checked the list on market button...I believe this saves one transaction (saves a little bit of KCAL).
You set your price. Choose the token, choose the amount. Initially, the default that appeared was set to 100 SOUL. I wondered, "How much is that in USD?"
I made a little app years ago called the Satoshi Bitcoin Converter for this type of stuff. Since learning about Phantasma, I added SOUL and KCAL. My web app told me that 100 SOUL was worth about $10.50. I thought this was way too much for my little NFT, so I adjusted it down.
I noticed a note explaining that my transaction would consume 20.0633 of my KCAL. I've been scorched by Gas costs on Ethereum before. I wondered, "How much is that in USD?" Back to the SatoshiBitcoinConverter.com app, KCAL page. It was about 27 cents. I deemed that okay to proceed.
Step 8 - Locked Content
Another optional and awesome possibility is the ability to add "locked content."
If grandma was sending you the envelope with the $5 inside, she could also write you a note telling you how special you are. I heart U! It's a secret message, until you, the envelope owner opens it. Even then, only you can see it.
The same is true here with Phantasma NFTs. You can add "locked content" that only the NFT owner can unlock and see.
My initial thinking was that this could be a file type, like a text file or image, but apparently that's not so. The NFT creation form asks for a URL. So, to current my understanding at least, this suggests that the locked content can essentially be anything that is placed online somewhere...anything accessible by the internet. It is "locked", simply because no one else ostensibly has or knows the URL to that content.
As a devil's advocate, I don't necessarily interpret that as being "locked" as much as I see it as being "hidden." A 5 gallon bucket full of gold coins buried in the ground on the back 40 acres isn't locked, but hidden. It is possible for someone to stumble upon it, maybe while digging for wild turnips, I don't know. I could be wrong in my interpretation here...I'm new to this as well...but, I 'm just relaying my initial thoughts and understanding.
For my NFT, I added this gif file that I'd put on ipfs.
The NFT creator did throw and error though when I tried to mint. The error message suggested that the lockedContent character length was too long. It's set to <=200 and it received 216. This confused me, the ipfs link showed up as only 65 characters. Hmm.
Anyway, I created a bitly shortened link, put that into the locked content URL, and it worked without a snag. Not sure why that happened, but, it worked.
After all of this, my wallet balance had adjusted a slight bit. It now showed:
SOUL 0 (2 staked)
KCAL 179.9352 (whereas I'd started with 200, you can a little over 20 was consumed in the burning)
Step 9 - There it is!
In a few moments, my NFT appeared!
The URL of the asset points directly to the NFT: https://ghostmarket.io/asset/pha/ghost/72794204328535756822127190309005523429121498329669362572657999393458586339642/
And that's it. I'm sure there's more to learn, but minting an NFT on Phantasma is very easy.
A Summary
- Minting NFTs on Phantasma is easy and rather inexpensive.
- The triple blockchain ability is great and cutting edge.
- I think there are tremendous possibilities to be built on by infusing NFTs with locked messages. I imagine people will apply this and come up with very clever use-cases that we've not yet seen.
I made a video version of myself creating this NFT. I did it in almost real-time, so I fumble around a bit. But, I wanted to leave it as-is for others to see my mistakes and learn from them. Watch on 3speak.co or on lbry.tv.
That's all. :)
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:)