As I was exploring the different blockchain marketplaces, I decided to put my collection on FTX.us despite some of its current limitations. Minted all three pieces below for now, and will continue through November 2, 2021. I will start auctioning them off in the next day or two. Feel free to take a look at https://ftx.us/nfts/gallery/8608264 or search for Day of the Dead on the FTX.us NFT marketplace.
I give my reasons for why I chose FTX.us over Opensea.io, Airnfts.com, Solanart.io, Holaplex.com, Nftone.net, and Ab2.gallery after the pics.
I explored what I considered to be some of the most popular blockchains, their marketplaces for NFT’s, and the costs required to mint/sell an NFT on those chains. Here is a quick list that I came up with. It may not be all encompassing, and there might be things I missed, but all I wanted to do was mint/sell my work relatively quickly and easily.
Why I chose FTX.us — A big reason was I could not find anywhere that limited the file size I wanted to upload. Thinking that whoever purchases my pieces may want to actually create a physical print of it, I wanted the ability to upload high resolution files which are generally pretty big. Day of the Dead #01 and #02 are 3840x3840 PNG images. #03 is a 6000x6000 JPEG. As I test out the size limitations, this might increase with each new piece so the buyer has the option to print on a large canvas to hang on a wall in a real world gallery.
Each one of my mints is costing me exactly $1.00. FTX.us takes 2% of the sale price which is on the lower end of other major marketplaces and does not allow you to add a royalty fee. Their gallery layout and UI is a tad clunky, (from the main NFT page you can only Browse, Mint, or use a search bar), but it is visually pleasing and easy to use.
I think the worst thing about using FTX.us right now is the inability to transfer the NFT’s to an outside wallet. Once they are minted, they are stuck there, which is a feature they say will come later. I really hope it’s sooner rather than later.
Another negative is the necessity for buyers to create an account on FTX.us to buy/bid. I have been using the overall site for a few months now and think it has one of the best UI’s when it comes to the crypto exchange aspect. My limited experience comes from using other exchanges like Binance.us, Kucoin, Coinbase, and Raydium. Referral link if you decide to sign up. https://ftx.us/#a=DOD2021
Overall, I obviously thought FTX.us was the best option for me. It might not be the best for you, but I’ll list some of the positives/negatives of other exchanges I looked into to help you decide.
Opensea.io (Ethereum/Polygon) — As I said in one of my previous entries, Opensea fees are just too high right now. They have a very nice royalty feature that FTX.us doesn’t have, so since I’m selling on FTX.us, whoever buys my pieces will not have to pay a royalty fee. That’s bad for me, but good for the buyer if they decide to sell later on. I’m ok with that.
Their file size limit is 40Mb which is huge compared to some of the other marketplaces. Their user-base is massive, which means possible huge exposure for the artist, if you can get the eyes on your work. No KYC necessary.
Airnfts.com(Binance Smart Chain) — I didn’t take time to check the current fees to mint on airnfts.com. They charge 2.5% per transaction which isn’t terrible, but they only allow files up to 8Mb in size. This was a deal breaker for me. I would have to make the file so small, or compress it to death. This means the buyer would not be able to make what I would consider a high quality physical print of the piece, and that was a necessity for me.
Solanart.io (Solana) — In order to mint a new collection on Solanart.io, you have to fill out a form and have to “fit” with their market. I’m a one man show and don’t want to wait around for approval, or justify my collection. I create what I think is cool and want to get it into the hands of others.
I realize the form is used to weed out certain projects, but I didn’t want to wait around. I don’t know much about the site as far as anything else, because I turned away when I realized you had to fill out the request.
Holaplex.com (Solana)— I was really optimistic about Holaplex, but I felt they were just still growing too much and finding their way.
In their documents outlining how to create a store, you have to spend about 0.25 SOL minimum (about $41.00 right now) and about 0.01 AR (about $0.53) right now. The first hurdle for me was getting the AR. The Holaplex team is nice enough to airdrop some of it to your Arweave wallet through their Discord, which is super awesome, but you need some more to make changes to certain things in your store. Unfortunately AR isn’t available on the exchanges I use, so I have no easy way to get it.
Another issue I saw was users in their Discord asking for help, and not getting any. It looks like Holaplex just started using a new support ticketing system that runs through a Discord bot, but there were multiple users talking about how they lost SOL, items weren’t minted, or were delivered to the wrong wallet, etc. and not receiving any replies from the staff. All these things are problems I expect would happen in a new project, but not one I wanted to put my art into right now. I’m hopeful this will improve as the staff and project grow.
Nftone.net (Tron) — This marketplace requires you to be approved before you can mint and start selling. From the documentation, it looks like it will be around $10 to mint one NFT on the chain, and that’s not counting the account creation costs and the 2% fee from the sale.
Getting approved ahead of time was the big thing I didn’t like here, just like Solanart. I want to create, mint, list, and go. I understand why they do this, but didn’t want to take the time to do it. They have pretty detailed documentation outlining the costs and how to get set up if you want to use Tron.
Ab2.gallery (Algorand) — I like Algorand as a project, and feel like it has some great potential all around. When I go to ab2.gallery though, I feel confused. For me, the home page shows 3 recent purchases, and 3 new listings, and a search box. That’s it! There’s no links to how to mint, where to mint, no filters for projects, nothing. Maybe some people like the barren landscape of that page, but I’m not one of them. After googling how to mint, I was able to see how it was done. Correction: There is a down arrow symbol to the right of the search box that links to other areas of the site.
A big drawback for me here was the 10% royalty fee on transactions. As an artist, that would obviously be amazing for me if my project took off, but it’s a bit high. Everyone has to pay me 10% of whatever they make on a sale because of my work? As a future seller, that’s always something I’m going to have to factor in down the road, and it’s not an insignificant amount. Being able to select the amount of royalties I wanted, or even being up to 5% would be reasonable to me, but 10% is a bit much. Pay me a fair price for the piece, and I won’t have to leech off royalties forever.
I don’t know very much about IPFS, so I chalked it up to a negative until I could learn more about using it. To me, it’s another hurdle I have to get across to mint and I want as few of those as possible. This is from their minting docs: ”Everything is recorded to and retrieved directly from the Algorand blockchain using API services provided by Rand Labs. Users also have the option to mint ASAs directly on AB2 Gallery, utilizing IPFS with API services provided by Protocol Labs, without the need to manage a third party account for media storage.”
The last thing was the 15Mb limit on file size. Again, as someone who wants my buyers to have the ability to create physical prints, this is just a tad small.
Those are the marketplaces I looked into during my brief search for a place to sell my NFT’s. Hopefully it will help you a little in your search as well. Happy creating and never stop learning!
James
