a twisted cypress, bent over a moonlit river
a twisted cypress, bent over a moonlit river
a twisted cypress, bent over a moonlit river

How to Mint an NFT

If you've never minted an NFT before, it can be a daunting process! We've put together a guide to help you navigate through the different steps you'll need to follow.

For details on the process and timeline, go to Rollout.

Preparing a Wallet

To mint an NFT on the Ethereum blockchain, you'll need both Ether (ETH) and a wallet that can hold your NFT.

The easiest way to do both at the same time is to download Rainbow, an iOS app that allows you to create a wallet and add up to $500 a week using Apple Pay. If that amount works for you, you can go straight to Minting.

However, if you need more than $500, follow these next steps.

Creating a Wallet

First, create an Ethereum wallet that you can use to conduct your transactions and hold your NFTs. A few options that we support are Metamask, WalletConnect (which works for Rainbow and many other wallets), and Coinbase Wallet (which is different from a Coinbase.com account).

Your Ethereum wallet will have a public address on the Ethereum network, which is where you can send and receive tokens like Ether and NFTs.

Buying Ether

The easiest way to buy Ether, the currency used on Ethereum, is to use a crypto exchange.

We recommend Coinbase for beginners. Note that this Coinbase.com account is different from a Coinbase Wallet account — it is an account for Coinbase's exchange, which allows you to trade currencies like USD for cryptocurrencies like Ether.

1. Create an account and buy some Ether.

  • Make sure that you have more Ether than you need for the cost of the mint — each Ethereum transaction requires "gas," the network fees that go into processing blockchain transactions. Gas fees vary by the type of transaction and depending on the level of activity in the Ethereum network, but minting an NFT can cost significantly more when there's high traffic. For example, the witches cost 0.07 ETH each to mint, so you may want to have 0.1 ETH per witch on hand.

2. Once you've bought your Ether, transfer it by sending it to the address of the wallet you just created earlier. Now you're ready to mint an NFT!

Minting

When you "mint" an NFT, you're interacting with a smart contract on the blockchain and making a transaction to create a new token under that contract, one that you own. For Crypto Coven, you can either mint through our website (beginner-friendly) or directly through Etherscan (more advanced).

Website (Beginner-Friendly)

The easiest way to mint an NFT for Crypto Coven will be through our website, since we'll handle a lot of the complexity for you. Sometimes it will be the only way to mint one of our NFTs.

1. You'll need to connect your wallet to our website using the "Connect Wallet" button — a modal will open, and you'll need to choose the wallet type you created earlier.

  • If you created a Rainbow wallet (or any other WalletConnect-enabled wallet), click the WalletConnect option. You'll see a QR code you need to scan. In Rainbow, you'll want to press the "Discover" button on the upper-right corner of the main screen, then the QR scanner icon on the upper-right corner of the next screen. Once you're there, scan the code on your screen, and you should be connected to our website.

2. Once your wallet is connected, select the NFTs you'd like to mint. Then click "Mint," and you should see an overview of the transaction you're about to create in your wallet, with the option to confirm it.

3. In most cases, the transaction should take a minute or two and then complete. Hooray, you've just minted your first NFT!

Note: In some uncommon cases (i.e., the contract hits the total limit of witches to mint), there is a possibility that your transaction will fail, which means that you will lose some or even all of the gas you paid. The reason that this scenario can happen is that any transaction on Ethereum requires gas to execute — you always have to pay for the computations you're enacting on the network. Here are some common reasons transactions can fail.

Etherscan (Advanced)

If you'd like to interact directly with the smart contract, you can sometimes mint NFTs on Etherscan, though not all of Crypto Coven's NFTs will be mintable on Etherscan. Etherscan only supports Metamask or WalletConnect, so Coinbase Wallet will not work for this method.

1. Go to the relevant contract on Etherscan. For example, here is our contract for the WITCHES. The contract should have a green checkmark on the "Contract" tab to indicate that the source code is deployed and verified.

2. You can click on the "Read Contract" button to check the state of the contract.

  • Sometimes a contract will not be minting at all times — for instance, there may be a variable like isPublicSaleActive that determines if a sale has started yet. If there is, check that any such variable is set to true before you attempt to mint a witch — otherwise, your transaction will be reverted, and you may lose gas.

3. Now head over to the "Write Contract" view. Here, you'll need to connect your wallet to Etherscan by clicking the "Connect to Web3" button. Once you're connected, you can start creating transactions under the smart contract.

Now it's time to do the minting!

1. Head to the appropriate function. In most cases, that will be a function that just says mint. Multiple the number of tokens you want to mint by the cost per token. Enter that total in the payableAmount field, along with the number of witches you want in the numberOfTokens field.

2. If you have access to some other way to mint (for instance, a claim drop where you can redeem a gifted token, or a community sale, scoped to a specific list of address), you'll need to go to that function instead.

  • If this function requires a Merkle proof, which is how we verify that your address is on our list, you'll need to retrieve your proof. Copy the proof associated with your address and paste it into the merkleProof field in Etherscan. It should look like a list of hashes: [0xe970...52d9, 0xe970...52d9, 0xe970...52d9, 0xe970...52d9]

In most cases, the transaction should take a minute or two and then complete. And… now you’ve got your NFT.