Creating an NFT can be expensive or relatively cheap if you know what you’re doing.
Depending on the size and scope of the project, it could cost anywhere from a few hundred to tens of thousands of dollars.
But don’t worry, there are ways to keep the costs down without compromising quality.
This blog post will discuss some affordable NFT creation options to help you get your business online without breaking the bank.
Read on if you’re interested in learning more!
What is mint NFT?
An NFT is a digital asset that’s minted on the Blockchain. It cannot be replicated or copied. It can’t even be edited unless the user takes it down and mints it again with the modifications.
That’s because Blockchain technology doesn’t allow the tampering of documents or data stored within its blocks. For an illustration, video, song, or any digital asset to become an NFT, it has to be minted on the Blockchain.
When you mint the NFT, you submit it as a transaction on the Blockchain. For the transaction to be validated, you must pay a fee to compensate the miners in the Blockchain, known as a gas fee.
The cost of minting an NFT can range anywhere from $.01 to $250, or perhaps even more. Prices are variable depending on the Blockchain:
- Ethereum can cost $30 on a good day at a good time, but it can easily reach hundreds of dollars on a congested day.
- Solana has some of the lowest fees among blockchains.
- Polygon is free, but it’s still subjected to marketplace fees.
- Other blockchains such as Tezos, Cardano, and WAX also have low fees.
What is the cheapest chain for minting an NFT?
Ethereum is a proof of work (PoW) Blockchain. This is a highly secure but energetically inefficient blockchain. Nonetheless, most users prefer Ethereum due to its security, as scams and security breaches are becoming more common in the NFT space.
Solana uses proof of stake (PoS) and a protocol known as proof of history (PoH), two protocols that allow for the Solana blockchain to provide a higher rate of transactions per second (TPS).
For comparison, Ethereum can process about 12 to 15 TPS, while Solana can process 65,000.
Solana follows a stateless architecture with a high-performing protocol allowing enhanced scalability. It can also enable several simultaneous smart contracts, and it uses different blockchain nodes for faster transactions. On the other hand, its hardware support is more expensive and less secure than Ethereum.
Polygon allows for interoperability between previous and present infrastructure scenarios of Ethereum, on top of great functionality and a high transaction speed. It incorporates some of the best features of both Ethereum and Solana.
What’s the cost to create an NFT?
There are ways to create NFTs for a lower cost or even for free. The traditional way of creating an NFT involves paying NFT marketplace fees and gas fees for it to be published.
Every Blockchain has different fees for processing transactions. On top of that, some blockchains might be more congested than others at different times of the day.
Gas fees are compensation fees paid by the person minting the NFT to compensate for the blockchain miners required to validate the transactions.
The more power needed for the mint, the higher the transaction volume on the chain, requiring a higher fee. Chains with a higher transaction speed tend to have lower fees.
As a rule of thumb, the Ethereum blockchain is the cheapest, with Solana being the most affordable.
This is because Ethereum has a low transaction speed rate, while Solana has a swift one. Add to that that Ethereum tends to be highly congested due to its widespread popularity, and it has become one of the most expensive chains for minting NFTs.
Solana and Polygon have the advantage of scalability, more affordable rates, and faster speeds in exchange for security; it emphasizes features and improvements.
Ethereum has the advantage of providing development and deployment features through smart contracts. This is thanks to the Ethereum virtual machine, allowing users to interact with them and create consolidated apps.
Ethereum allows for users to create democratic decision-making organizations, NFT DAOs, where there’s not a single leader taking decisions but token holders.
How to create NFT for free
You also have to factor in the cost of creating the digital asset before it is minted as an NFT. Many artists don’t factor how much time they spend creating an NFT collection or the cost of the material and software to create quality art.
There are many chains available on different NFT marketplaces. Not all NFT marketplaces have all blockchains, and not all allow for the use of the same crypto wallets.
OpenSea and Rarible both allow for many different blockchains. OpenSea, in particular, allows Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana NFTs to be listed as available.
You can create an NFT for free using a process known as lazy minting. Lazy minting allows you to list the NFT as available off-chain and only mint it when a sale is secured.
This allows users to bypass the high gas fees that characterize the Ethereum blockchain in case they still want to mint in Ethereum rather than Solana, Polygon, or any of the others. The artist doesn’t have to pay the gas fees to mint the NFTs, but the fees are deducted once the buyer purchases the NFT.
To learn more about how to lazy mint to create an NFT for free, check our article here.
Not all chains nor all marketplaces allow for lazy minting. OpenSea and Rarible both offer the free minting option, but other marketplaces might not.
Creating an NFT can be cheap
Creating an NFT without guidance can be expensive, but there are cheap alternatives that make it much easier on the crypto wallet.
There’s lazy minting, or you can mint the NFT on a faster chain like Solana. Since OpenSea allows you to list Solana NFTs there, you won’t miss out on using their marketplace if that’s what you’re looking for.
Check out our other guides on What are NFTs to learn more about how to create an NFT .
