NFTs are one of the foundations of web3. This series will introduce NFTs through 30 short articles, allowing everyone to understand and master the relevant knowledge about NFTs from scratch.
In previous articles, we talked about how NFTs need to be minted for the first time. In this article, we will delve into the principles behind it.
Minting is the process of interacting with the NFT smart contract to generate an NFT. The minting action only occurs when an NFT is generated for the first time.
Next, let's take a detailed look at what happens during the minting process.
First, let's understand what a smart contract is. Simply put, it is executable code stored on the blockchain, and generally, each smart contract can implement certain functions.
Minting is the process of users interacting with the NFT smart contract to generate a brand new NFT.
To ensure compatibility among products on Ethereum, there is an official set of standards. There are two standards for generating NFTs: ERC-721 and ERC-1155. These two standards can be used to create NFTs. (For more information about ERC, you can see here, and we will mainly focus on these two standards.)
NFTs generated by ERC-721 are unique, while NFTs generated by ERC-1155 can be unique or non-unique. In other words, NFTs generated by ERC-721 are non-fungible, while NFTs generated by ERC-1155 can be fungible or non-fungible, depending on the developer's decision.
Although ERC-1155 offers more options, the current data shows that ERC-721 is more widely adopted. This may be because early well-known NFTs were built on the 721 standard, which has a larger user acceptance, more projects, and a more mature standard. Using a more mature standard can reduce the cost of user education for projects and avoid the risks of using new standards.
When the code for an NFT project is completed and deployed on the chain, the questions of when, how, and by whom these NFTs are minted are controlled by people. During the minting process, the project can mint a portion or all of the NFTs themselves, or they can allow users to mint them. It is also worth mentioning that if users are allowed to mint, the mint price for each NFT can be set in advance in the code.
In summary, we now know that minting is the process of interacting with the smart contract to generate an NFT. For an NFT, it is only "minted" when it is generated as an NFT for the first time by the smart contract. Buying NFTs in the marketplace or receiving NFTs from others does not involve the "minting" operation. To make a comparison with a printed artwork, minting is the action of printing a pattern on a blank paper, and once completed, the artwork will flow into the market.
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