Anyone can create NFTs from well-known artists, to musicians, to famous tweeters and even fartists (artists who are selling farts - better you don’t ask!). NFTs are big business, with over $500 million generated in March alone, one piece raked in an incredible $70 million in an auction, which would have well and truly covered the creator’s fees! In February 2021, one art collector demonstrated just how profitable the NFT industry can be by reselling his Beeple piece for nearly 1000 times its initial price.
But when creating or minting NFTs, as it is officially known, creators must first be aware of the minting fees, which can sometimes be confusing and a minefield of hidden fees. Some artists have even had to suffer losses following their sale of minted art.
Generally speaking minting an NFT can cost anywhere from $1 up to more than $1,000. And various marketplaces have different fee models. Rarible promotes up front fees to sellers, while others take a cut of the profits. Others still do not mint an NFT unless they have a confirmed buyer for the piece.
Perhaps, the cheapest way to engage with NFT marketplaces is by minting on sidechains such as Tezos. This enables creators to move their NFTs between chains and to mint on the cheaper chains and then to move them to Ethereum if they need to, where they can enjoy minimal minting fees and the highest ROI for their minted NFTs.
We have created a list of 5 NFT platforms with the lowest minting fees:
1. Hic et nunc
Hic et nunc, meaning here and now, is a decentralized NFT platform built on Tezos with over half a million contract calls on the platform and the number is growing every day. The platform has seen over 1,000 transactions per day since March 28.
2. Kalamint
Kalamint is the first community-owned public NFT marketplace that enables users to create, buy, sell and collect NFTs on the Tezos blockchain using the FA2 token standard. Kalamint recently partnered with PangeaSeed Foundation to raise awareness about Clean NFTs. Kala specializes in art native to the Indian subcontinent and it promises minting at a snippet of the cost when compared to marketplaces on the Ethereum chain.
3. VIV3
VIV3’s vision is to empower a billion people to create, trade and own the world's most valuable creations. That’s why this fresh marketplace is building on Flow, which is a scalable smart contract platform that delivers performance and allows creators to keep costs down while still maintaining the value of decentralization.
VIV3 is a hub for artists, game studios and brands that want to mint unique tokens that can be directly acquired by collectors, gamers and digital asset traders.
4. Atomichub
Atomic is an NFT platform for all kinds of digital collectibles that is based on the EOSIO blockchain technology. Atomic allows users to tokenize and create digital assets and to buy, sell & conduct auctions of NFTs inside the marketplace. The website is an exceptional resource of statistics to see how much art is being bought and sold, and it also shows you the top users. It focuses purely on top quality artwork. According to Atomichub:
"All the art you’re using should be original and either created by you, or commissioned for the exclusive use in your collection.
Using openly available assets, e.g. stock photos, makes your collection ineligible for whitelisting. The only exception to this is when the unoriginal assets only are a small part of an otherwise original piece of art. Taking publicly available images and applying digital filters to them does not constitute original art."
5. NFT Showroom
NFT Showroom is a marketplace for digital art NFTs and it is built on Hive, which is a fast and free blockchain that keeps the price of creating NFTs to an absolute minimum. Their mission is to provide a platform that is easy to use, less expensive to transact for both the creator and collector, and which solves existing problems in the crypto art sphere.
