A Newbie’s Cheat Sheet: Creating a Custom 10k NFT Collection with Developers

Written by rocknblock | Published 2022/06/21
Tech Story Tags: blockchain | nft-art | nft-top-story | nft-collectibles | blockchain-development | blockchain-adoption | mastering-nft | blockchain-writing-contest

TLDRDetailed guide to the world of nft collections from idea to realization. It's useful for all beginners how to create your own collection and not to miscalculate.via the TL;DR App

Launching your product seems a lot more complicated if you don’t know all stages of the process. Let’s compartmentalize it and see what we get.

Getting Acquainted

We are Rock’n’Block — an international blockchain development company that has been operating since 2017. Our portfolio consists of 300+ projects and 40,000+ deployed smart contracts. Our team is more than 160 specialists, including frontend, backend, and Solidity developers.

Whereas creating something is not as easy as using it, our team is willing to show you this side of the blockchain world.

The Idea

Coming up with an idea is your start line: think of what will be in the collection and how will the graphic elements be arranged. May, you’re inspired by CryptoPunks and The Bored Ape Yacht Club or less conspicuous collections, but, anyway, you need to understand how it can look and what you’re aiming at. Somehow it’s not clear to certain people that the idea needs to be original. Thus, there are a ton of noname NFTs and a small chance to find a “pearl”.

Looking for a Contractor

You have an idea, and you are looking for a developer that can turn it into a real product. Unfortunately, first, you need to filter out scammers just to avoid time/money loss and hair graying. The next step is avoiding many low-cost developers who can’t offer anything that will set your collection apart from others. They simply assemble the constructor from the same pieces in a primitive and a drab way every time. Please, remember: the basic characteristics of a collection won’t let it promote itself organically.

Moreover, the low cost usually means less control, less security, and less feedback. Would you like to manage the supply, to know that users won’t accidentally lose the NFTs they bought from you, and to be in touch with your contractor if you don’t like the result of the work? Probably, yes. And your developer would better know that.

At this stage, you choose what blockchain your collection is created on. OpenSea and many other marketplaces show the tokens built on the Ethereum network and Polygon. The programming language needed for them is Solidity, as well as for Binance Smart Chain. This language is expected in the development world, but if you want to create tokens on Solana, you need a developer that has Rust in his stack. Our team has specialists of both types, so our customers can choose the most preferred technology.

Creating Artworks

A sudden internal discovery — not every customer has ready-made layouts for the collection. Mostly, people have raw ideas and need a designer. If you’re one of these customers, here’s what you can do:

  • find a designer who can become your partner;
  • hire a designer to do it for a fee;
  • find a team that already has a designer and order turnkey development.

We always work turnkey in Rock’n’Block, saving time for communications and avoiding misunderstanding.

N.B.: If you want to reduce the development time, prepare the artworks before you come to the developer; otherwise, the project can take up to 50% more time.

An NFT collection can be made in 2D or 3D. 2D is easier to create, but 3D can provide more space for features. Anyway, the good quality of the artwork is unquestioningly important: both designer’s skill and image resolution. If you go turnkey with us, our designers can produce great graphics in any style or form you need.

Generation Logic

The full name of the subject is “10k generated NFT collection”, and now let’s talk about its first part. Generation logic is responsible for how items will be created, and it’s even more important than the artworks. At this stage, you set which elements will appear more or less often and according to which pattern. This mechanism directly affects the success of the collection: if it’s unique, the collection has a chance to be popular. Marketplaces are full of generative NFTs — coming up with similar ones can not work anymore. We recommend making an effort to put many factors into it. Quirky but understandable for users is the balance you need.

Backend and WEB3

The next step is configuring the backend. It’s the architecture of the project and how it works at its core. However, in plain English, it’s software that implements the generation logic and creates the tokens. It takes different design layers and mixes them according to the generation logic. WEB3 connects it with the smart contract, and the magic happens.

Unique Opportunities

Your desired features for management and distribution are located in the smart contract. By default, it can mint tokens, but here are some examples of what you can also implement to get the best results.

  • Price changing. You can change the price of your unsold NFTs with a certain pattern. For example, implement a “Dutch auction”: you start the process, and the price goes up/down at set intervals until it reaches the limit.

  • Start/stop presale. Arrange a presale of the tokens for a special group of people and decide if it starts or stops.

  • Airdrop. Collect a blockchain address base to send your tokens to a certain group of people or let them claim the NFTs on your website.

  • Whitelist. Create a list of people who are allowed to buy your tokens and put their blockchain addresses into the smart contract. Only these addresses are allowed to buy. N.B.: this operation can cost a fortune because every entered value (address) assumes the use of gas.

  • Merkle tree. It’s a much more cost-effective way to do the same thing because the smart contract contains only one value. This value leads to a special backend software that contains the address base and proves that the particular one is allowed to buy a certain amount of the NFTs. A user doesn’t see any of these processes because they are 100% automated. Also, the collection creator can set a special price for these people — even 0, so they can pay only for the token minting and transaction to their wallets.

  • Reveal. By default, all your NFTs are tokens with a standard picture. A user buys a pig in a poke, and it reveals itself by your command.

  • Lootbox. It follows the same principle as Reveal but is more complex. A user buys an unrevealed NFT with a certain rarity. If the user wants to reveal it, the backend understands that and generates a token with this exact rarity.

  • Craft. For example, a holder of 2 NFTs can combine them into a new one with some unusual characteristics. It’s possible to implement any way of crafting and realize any creator’s fantasy.

The NFT sphere is a huge field for the creation and embedding of different interaction mechanics, but you should decide and tell the developers what you want in the very first place. It’s a lot easier to build a house starting from the foundation.

Website and Mainnet

To get the collection ready for the sales start, everything stitches with the frontend — your website. It lets users connect Metamask or WalletConnect wallets and refers to the smart contract to mint the tokens. Releasing the website means that the collection is on the mainnet and the development project is over.

Resume

When you pay even for such an ordinary service as a car wash, you expect that it will be done by someone experienced and reliable, and the same is especially important in hi-tech development. Save your tears for another day.

The current development abilities are enough to build outstanding projects, and the market is waiting for them. We wanted to share everything we know so you can create with confidence and passion. We wish you luck and would love to bring your vision to life.


Written by rocknblock | We are creating the future with custom blockchain software development for businesses and startups.
Published by HackerNoon on 2022/06/21