Alpha Always #3 - Minting Verified Contracts
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The third in my "AlphaAlways" series is one that's been covered many times by many others. But still, I figured I might as well put my own spin on it.
β How to Mint From Contract β
π (And Like...Why Do It?) π
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So let's take a standard NFT drop. You're given a website. You're told that at 5:00PM EST, the "Mint" button will appear and hey, presto, you get to mint.
Seems simple, right? Why not just do that?
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Few reasons.
(1) The server could be terrible. Mint time hits. Website dies. You're losing the race.
(2) The website could be terrible. Mint time hits. Gas estimate is 5,000,000 GWEI. NGMI.
(3) You're master of your own destiny, and want to mint on your terms.
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Let's go into more detail.
π» Server Trouble π»
Us degens love to FOMO. Suddenly a small project becomes super popular, and doesn't expect the traffic. Everyone reloads at mint time. Server dies. Mint button doesn't appear. People minting from contract are winning.
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π Website Trouble π
Sometimes the mint function on a website has errors, which results in MetaMask estimating gas well above what it should be. I saw this recently with a gen project and many people instantly gave up on mint. Minting from contract can help.
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ποΈ Master Your Destiny ποΈ
Ok, so sometimes projects make weird design decisions on their website.
"1 MINT. 3 MINTS. 5 MINTS"
What if you want 2 mints? What if you want 4?
Minting from contract generally lets you choose exactly how many mints you want.
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So what does minting from contract involve / mean?
Simple. Most NFT drops will "verify" their contracts on @etherscan and provide an interface allowing you to trigger the commands in the contract that do different things...like minting an NFT. You use that to mint instead.
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π΅οΈ Just before we get to there...How do we find the NFT mint contract? π΅οΈ
There's a few key ways:
- Project Discord
- Project Website
- EtherScan Sleuthing
- OpenSea
- Alpha Groups
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π΅ Discord π΅
Often the "Announcements" (or similar) channel in a project's Discord will set out the contract address ahead of mint. They want you to know they're legit.
β With all the scams going around lately though, just watch out for hacks and links to fake contracts.
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ποΈ Project Website ποΈ
The project website will often have the contract address for verification.
If not, you can sometimes start the "Mint" transaction from the website, and check where MetaMask is sending your transaction. to get the contract address.
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π EtherScan Sleuthing π
You have to be careful with this one, as you may well get the wrong contract, but...
(1) Go to EtherScan
(2) Hover "Tokens" > Click "ERC721 Top Tokens"
(3) Click the Spyglass.
(4) Search the project name.
(5) Hope you find the contract.
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π OpenSea π
If you're minting a project that has already had some mints, you can find the contract address via OpenSea.
(1) Click an NFT from the project on OpenSea.
(2) Go to Details.
(3) Click the blue "Contract Address" link.
(4) EtherScan Opens. Voila!
(Example π½)
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βοΈ Alpha Groups βοΈ
If you're in any group with decent alpha and discussion around new projects, members will often post the contract address alongside their findings, making it super easy for you. β€οΈ
But then again, you'll want to contribute sometimes too, right? π
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Ok, so you've found the contract. Now what?
(1) Go to EtherScan
(2) Paste Contract Address in Search
(3) Click "Contract"
(4) Click "Write Contract"
(5) Look for the mint function
Mint functions may be called all sorts of things. But it'll usually be obvious.
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Different contracts may have different mint functions. As examples:
-some might have a mint specifically for whitelisted owners
-others might have a "mint()" call, and a "mintMany()" call for multiple mints.
Check past TXs on EtherScan to get a feel for what each does.
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Once you've found your relevant mint function, you'll want to click the "Connect to Web3" button at the top of the "Write Contract" page on EtherScan.
This'll prompt your MetaMask to connect to the site, so EtherScan can send transactions to your MetaMask for you to sign.
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Many contracts will have their mint function with two arguments:
(1) payableAmount (which will be the cost per mint * the number of mints you want)
and
(2) _MintAmount (which will be the number you want to mint)
(Example β¬οΈ )
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Some caution is needed though, and different contracts will have varying functions which require different arguments.
If you're unsure, you can take a look at other people's transactions to see which functions, and what arguments, they used to achieve a certain result.
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To use a really basic example, in the below screenshot, we can see that:
(1) Tokens Transferred: 5 @ZombiemiceNFT were minted
(2) Value: Total cost was 0.1 ETH therefore 0.02 ETH per mint
(3) Input Data: I called the "Mint" function and inserted 5 as the number of mints.
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You'll glean different information from different transactions and honestly, you'll pick up bits of knowledge the more you do this.
You can also look at the contract itself, but that's a little more complicated.
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β
If you're unsure or don't know what you're doing, it's probably best to err on the side of caution and either:
(1) seek some assistance from someone who does know, or
(2) use the website to mint instead.
β
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The alternative, if you're a bit of a daredevil (πΏ), is to just play around with this stuff.
You'll likely fail, but you'll learn fast. Just be aware of the possible risks. You don't want to accidentally send a TX for 1 ETH instead of 0.01 ETH.
Be careful and DYOR.
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So now you know (briefly) how to mint from contract. You know why it can be useful. π§
Now here's some additional tidbits you might need to be aware of when you're putting this stuff into practice.
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Just because you know the contract address, you won't always be able to mint directly.
Many contracts now employ a "whitelist" which will only allow certain addresses to interact with the mint() function before a certain time, or a certain switch is flipped.
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π Talking about switches, some contracts will have a "flipSaleState" switch, which allows the contract owner to turn minting on and off for the public, or indeed a specific group (such as whitelisted addresses as discussed above). π
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You'll often see this in the "Read Contract" tab on EtherScan, if it's relevant, with a field saying something like "saleActive" or "publicSaleActive" etc.
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If relevant and the "sale state" is set as false, then you'll want to monitor the Contract Owner's wallet for the moment they submit a "flipSaleState" transaction to activate the mint in order to get a headstart.
π
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Other contracts will prevent people from minting until the block that the mint transaction is submitted in is after a certain date or time.
If this is the case, you might see something like a "saleActive" timestamp in the "Read Contract" section of EtherScan.
(E.G. β¬οΈ)
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In the above case - taken from the Vox contract - we can see the "saleStartTimestamp" is 1628632800.
That's in uint256 format (Unix), so we need that to be converted into a real time and date.
This site is useful for that:
epochconverter.com/
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By putting in the uint256 number and clicking convert, the site'll spit out a time and date, and that's when minting will effectively start.
You'll want to position your mint transaction so that it falls within a block just after that time.
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So hopefully now you've got a general idea of how to mint from contract!
Good luck out there. Be careful. Don't do anything I wouldn't. I take no responsibility for any misadventures!
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I thought it might also be worth just following up with some examples of how I've seen these techniques in the past.
I won't go into too much detail, but it might give you a bit of a taste of what's possible.
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π - Fake Whitelist
I've seen a few projects where mint was apparently limited to particular people.
In fact, the mint webpage was simply hidden to most and anyone with the contract address could mint directly from it.
Just don't ruin anyone's hard work.
Be good.
π
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π - Lining Up Transactions
This is more advanced, but with the contract ready, there's ways of lining up your transactions by minting from contract, so that when the contract opens, you can rapidly push through multiple transactions at once.
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π Saving Gas
This one's briefly mentioned above, but I recently came across a drop where the website was throwing up huge estimated gas in MetaMask.
Minting directly from the contract allowed MetaMask to better estimate the gas, resulting in much-reduced mint cost.
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Hopefully all of the above has been somewhat useful! As always, any and all feedback is hugely welcome.
If you have any questions, feel free to give me a shout and I'll do what I can to assist!
Take care all, and thanks again for reading my ramblings! β€οΈ