With Ethereum gas fees shooting through the roof, some cryptoartists are searching for alternatives that don’t have gas fees.
A brand-new NFT art marketplace called NFT Showroom on the Hive blockchain* has launched its alpha and it’s already fully functioning. So far, I’ve sold a total of 15 NFTs on NFT Showroom, and I am very excited about it.
note: *technically, Hive Engine https://hive-engine.rocks/ is the smart contract-enabled platform that processes the buys and sells of NFT Showroom. It’s built on top of the Hive blockchain https://hiveblocks.com/
A few weeks ago, I decided to take a deep dive into the cryptoart world and create NFTs of my newest series, RICH EVIL: Epstein. I’ve learned a lot during these past weeks and people are now asking me how to get started with cryptoart.
This guide is geared towards artists who don’t have a lot of cash to throw around. If you follow all the steps here, it’s possible to mint your first NFT for free. On Hive, you have an opportunity to earn crypto for your blog posts which you can then use to mint your NFT.
This guide is for absolute beginners and for non-famous artists. If you’re already a famous, well-established artist, just apply to Super Rare or Nifty Gateway. For the rest of you, I’m going to focus on the two easiest ways to create your very first cryptoart NFTs: NFT Showroom and Rarible. This tutorial covers NFT Showroom. Stay tuned for the next one about Rarible. If you have some money and are ready to dive in, just skip the steps related to blogging.
NFTs are tokens that you create of your artwork that people can buy.
NFT Showroom
Fee to mint one NFT: 5 Hive (one Hive = $.23)
Fee for additional editions: 1 Hive per edition
Gas fees: No
Tech Platform: Hive Engine
I'm both an artist and a collector on NFT Showroom
I recommend you to start out with NFT Showroom because minting on this platform has no gas fees, and it costs a flat rate of 5 Hive to mint one NFT. The other reason I recommend starting with NFT Showroom is that you have the chance to earn crypto for free by blogging on Hive. So it’s technically possible to mint your first NFT for free, by earning Hive from writing a few articles. It takes a week to get your payout, but for cryptoartists who want to have blogging as part of their sales funnel, this is a good way to start out.
This guide not a guarantee that you will earn crypto by blogging on Hive, but if you follow my guide, it’s definitely possible. If you want to skip the free route, and would rather just buy some crypto to mint your first NFT, skip ahead.
Step 1: Create Free Hive Account
Go to https://hiveonboard.com/create-account?ref=hivepeople
Create a new Hive account. Make sure and save a copy of your private keys in a document like Word. Then save this Word document on a USB stick.
Step 2: Download Hive Keychain Extension
Brave/Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hive-keychain/jcacnejopjdphbnjgfaaobbfafkihpep
Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hive-keychain/
Hive Keychain is the equivalent to MetaMask. It’s your wallet you’ll use to do two things: log into NFT Showroom and pay to mint your first NFT cryptoart.
Watch this video tutorial for Steps 1 & 2:
Additional info: @hivepeople/hive-for-noobs
Step 3: Fill Out Your Profile on NFT Showroom & Submit Artist Links
Before you can mint your art on NFT Showroom, the team has to verify your identity to ensure that you’re who you say you are. To do this, go to NFT Showroom and click on your Profile section. Put all your social media links there, write your bio and complete all fields. You will need to do this step before you’re accepted into NFT Showroom as an artist. Read through the FAQ page too: https://nftshowroom.com/faq
Step 4: Join NFT Showroom Discord
https://discord.com/invite/PuEeYuK
After you have filled out the Profile section on your NFT Showroom account, join the discord and meet the community: https://discord.com/invite/PuEeYuK
Read the FAQ page in discord.
It costs 5 Hive to mint one NFT. So if you have earned some Hive dollars (after the 7 day payout window), you can use that to mint your first NFT.
Step 5: Convert HBD or ETH to HIVE Using Blocktrades
https://www.blocktrades.us/en/trade
Watch the video tutorial to learn how to convert ETH/HBD/BTC to Hive
Hive is unlike Ethereum in one big respect: your Hive username is your Hive wallet address. This means when you send Hive to your Hive wallet, you send it to your human readable wallet account. For example, my Hive wallet address is stellabelle, so when I send money from Blocktrades, the wallet address I write in there is: stellabelle. This is very different from an Ethereum wallet address that looks like this: 0x3bCf58FC7B242285C692B7568406f9ADf22703B0
However, our private keys which are linked to our account are long strings of numbers and letters, so even with Hive we have not escaped the complexity really.
warning: When you send Hive to an exchange, you must use the MEMO or else your funds will be lost.
Step 6: Deposit HIVE Into Your Wallet on NFT Showrooom
Before you can mint your first NFT, you’ll need to deposit some Hive into your NFT Showroom wallet. So go to NFT Showroom, log in using Hive Keychain, and go to your wallet. Hit the Deposit button. You need at least 5 Hive to mint one NFT. And your Hive has to be converted to SwapHive, but this is done automatically once you deposit Hive into your NFT Showroom wallet, so you don’t have to think about it.
(brief tech explanation: When you deposit Hive into your NFT Showroom wallet, this automatically converts Hive into SwapHive which is necessary in order to process the smart contracts for NFTs. Unlike Ethereum, which is a smart contract platform, the Hive blockchain itself isn’t a smart contract chain. However, a smart contract engine, called Hive Engine was built on top of the Hive blockchain to process smart contracts.)
Step 6: Mint Your First NFT
Once you have 5 SwapHive deposited in your NFT Showroom wallet and you’ve been whitelisted, you’re ready to mint your first NFT.
Art file types accepted:
GIF, JPEG, PNG: Up to 30 MB in size.
MP4: Up to 100 MB in size.
Click on ‘Tokenize’.
Watch the video tutorial that shows all the steps:
Once you fill out all the fields for your NFT cryptoart, you have to go to your Collection to add it to your cart. Click on the + button on the right. Then you go to your Cart. Click on the Sell button, then add your price. After this is done, your NFT is ready for people to buy! The file types and sizes were just updated so for images/gifs, now it's 30 MB, and for MP4's it's 100 MB limit. This was updated on Aug. 6.
Congratulations, you’ve just made your first NFT.
You can search for tags now, and you get the transaction details in the site. You also can get notifications when people buy your art.
Step 7: How To Sell Your NFT
Sample Tweet:
https://twitter.com/stellabelle/status/1288595214194610177
- stellabelle
In some ways, selling your NFT can be harder than making it. Here are some tips for selling your cryptoart. There is an established community of cryptoartists on Twitter, so get a Twitter account. For each NFT you create, publish a tweet on Twitter. Here’s a sample tweet with some hashtags that are helpful for new artists. Use this hashtag if you’re not an established cryptoartist: #NobodyArtistClub. Use these hashtags for cryptoart: #NFT #cryptoart #rareart #digitalart #cryptoartists and make sure and tag the platform you used to mint your NFT.
Sample Tweet:
My latest #NFT, Himawari, just dropped on @nftshowroom.
“Become a slave to your imagination. Become the himawari, too big and bright to ignore anymore.”
#GIF, 5/5 editions, 75 $Hive each : https://nftshowroom.com/gallery/stellabelle_absurd-portraits_himawari
#cryptoart #digitalart #rareart #hive #raredigitalart #NobodyArtistClub #crypto #blockchainart
EXTRA STEPS FOR CRYPTOARTISTS WHO WANT TO EARN HIVE BY BLOGGING
Step Z: Join Alien Art Hive
The cool thing about Alien Art Hive is that it embraces cryptoart from all platforms, including ETH, EOS and Hive. The founder of this Community is a well-established cryptoartist herself, so the atmosphere is welcoming to all different technologies.
Step Y: Write Your #IntroduceYourself Artist Post in Alien Art Community
This step is for cryptoartists who want to earn some Hive and use that to mint on NFT Showroom. If you just want to mint a NFT on NFT Showroom and already have Hive crypto, then you can skip this step.
Now that you have your Hive Keychain set up, it’s time to write your #IntroduceYourself artist post in the Alien Art Community on Peakd.com. Peakd is the best way to blog on the Hive blockchain, imo.
In order for your post to be included in the Alien Art Hive, you have to navigate to the Alien Art Community and hit the button, subscribe. Then click the button “Write a post” from within the Alien Art Hive community page.
Make sure and tag me @stellabelle in your post, and then at the bottom you need to add the tag, introduceyourself. If you want your payout rewards quickly, make sure you set it to HBD/Hive Power, not 100% Hive Power. FYI, HBD is Hive dollars.
If you have any troubles here, you can join the Alien Art Discord server to get tech support: https://discord.com/invite/63u6JWa
It takes 7 days to earn your crypto on Peakd. I highly recommend you write more blog posts about your art during your first week on Hive, and also find other people’s art that you like, and comment on them. Make friends and get to know people while you’re waiting to get your crypto earnings from your posts.
After 7 days, you should now see your payout in your wallet (if you received enough upvotes). You will notice that you received HBD (Hive dollars). You need to first convert these to Hive so you can use this to mint your NFT. I like to use Blocktrades because it’s an instant conversion that takes only minutes to complete. Ofc if you're converting ETH to Hive it will take a lot longer to process.
Follow me on Twitter for more tips about cryptoart: https://twitter.com/stellabelle
