NFT Guide: Minting Via Smart Contract

This article will explain how to directly mint NFTs via the smart contract. This can help you mint even when the mint page/website is down or even be able to mint BEFORE an official drop.

🤖 NFT Websites Crashes When Minting!

There are oftentimes problems during launches of NFT collections, some from delays, an absence of team, or a lack of communication. One big problem that can affect your ability to mint a token would be if the website crashes or stalls during the drop. This can happen due to many reasons, most of the time the website can stall due to an influx of traffic. This is common knowledge, and drops are highly anticipated these days. Thousands of people wait in discords and Twitter feeds for the announcement of a drop.

Imagine staring at this screen after weeks of anticipation for a launch!

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🤷‍♂️ Pros & Cons Of Minting Via Contract

Pros: Theoretically, minting via the token’s contract is faster than going through the website as it lets you bypass the website, thus taking 1 less step. How? You can mint before the ‘official’ drop time. Yes, that’s right. To mint before the gas gets crazy. Make sure you subscribe to the newsletter if you find this article helpful in any way.

Cons: Mint functions in the token contract don’t protect you from overpaying gas for the NFT, and sometimes is just easier via the website. This is only for if the website crashes during launch or if the contract is released before launch.

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🔰 What You Will Need?

You will need the following four things:

1️⃣  Enough ETH in your wallet for mint price + gas price.

2️⃣  The verified contract address, from team or released before launch on website.

3️⃣  Know what the price per token is, no need to overpay.

4️⃣  Know the maximum number of tokens able to be minted in one tx.¹

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😃 Let’s Start!

You will need to navigate to the contract, make sure it is the correct verified contract taken from the official collection or the team. Usually, the contract is available on each collection’s website pre-launch and you just need to click it to be taken to Etherscan. If it is not, the team will be able to provide the verified address through their communications in the event of a site crash. After getting the contract, Etherscan and paste the contract address below in the address search and enter. I'm using the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) contract: 0xBC4CA0EdA7647A8aB7C2061c2E118A18a936f13D

Copy and paste the token address and hit enter.

After entering the address, find the ‘Read Contract’ button underneath the ‘Contract’ tab. This will give you the ability to read and double-check the price and a maximum number of mints per tx. Most of the time in ERC-721’s (NFTs) this information is provided and can be accessed this way.

Find ‘Read Contract’ underneath ‘Contract’

Under the BAYC contract, the price is found under ‘apePrice’ and the max purchase per tx is found under ‘maxApePurchase’. This will be different for all projects but will be very clear each time you explore NFT contracts. The price is: 80000000000000000 (wei²) = 0.08 ETH. The max mint amount per tx is 20. You’ve pretty much done the basics of reading an ERC-721 contract. Well done. If a particular team says there are only x amounts of tokens in a certain collection, you can check/verify their claims by looking at the actual contract this way.

Now, briefly on the mint function. There are inputs & requirements when minting via the smart contract.

The inputs required are:

• Number of tokens to be minted

• Amount of ETH to be used/sent

The requirements are:

• Sale is active (even if the website is down, the sale will still be active)

• The number of tokens to mint is under than max allowed per tx (20)

• The number of tokens to mint is under max supply (10,000 in BAYC’s case)

• ETH to be used/sent is enough (price x # tokens)

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😃 Let’s Mint!

Now that you have the information you need, click ‘Write Contract’ underneath ‘Contract’. Then you will need to Connect to Web3 with your MetaMask wallet.

Proceed to ‘mintApe’ or the equivalent function of the token and enter your ETH amount to be used/spent and the number of tokens wanted. Click ‘Write’ and your MetaMask wallet will pop up. Accept the transaction like how you normally would when minting. The main difference would be that the token is minted directly from the smart contract. How neat!

Inputs into their respective boxes.

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⌛ Conclusion

That concludes the article on minting NFTs via the smart contract. You can be massively ahead of your competition by minting before the official drop time if you have your hands on the verified contract address of the token before launch. This can also be another way to mint a token if the website has crashed or is overloaded.

While you are looking around why not check out our Youtube Channel NFT Post for some free content? Make sure to subscribe and to be notified for each video upload! You can also follow me on Twitter @HuhaoNFT for giveaways and the latest happenings in NFTs.

Huhao @HuhaoNFT

Are you suffering alone at night thinking about how much you could have made or saved had you bought or sold at a certain time? Stop you will never be able to change the past so forget about it. Keep on going and it may happen after enough time.

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1. tx: Transaction

2. Wei: The smallest denomination of ETH. One ether = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 wei