Anthony Georgiades explains the importance of imprinting your NFTs on your own smart contract

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) have taken the crypto space, and even the attention of people outside of crypto, to a new level. From the very beginning to today, some NFTs are sold for millions of dollars in the form of cryptocurrencies.

However, getting into crypto can be a difficult task for many people, especially those who have no prior understanding of how blockchain technology works and how to get artwork, music or videos converted into NFTs to begin with.

SmartMint solves this hurdle by providing a no-code NFT redemption platform that literally anyone can use.

The current state of NFT Minting

Before SmartMint, there was a huge barrier to entry for minting NFTs. There was no simple solution where users could easily create smart contracts and create NFTs that allow custom metadata, properties and attributes while enabling permanent NFT data and metadata storage on a truly decentralized network.

Creators can go to a secondary NFT marketplace to create an NFT. However, these will usually limit the number of properties or data that users can add. And in most cases, these marketplaces will retain ownership of the smart contract deployed on behalf of the creators.

Finally, creators will also find that these marketplaces offer limited functionality in terms of supporting metadata storage, authenticity, and protection against counterfeiting or counterfeiting.

So, what is the alternative?

For years, creators had to learn to manually code and deploy their own smart contracts on blockchain networks or hire a developer to do it for them.

However, each blockchain has its own programming language and complications. For example, Ethereum smart contracts are written in Solidity while Solana is based on Rust.

From a creator’s perspective, having to learn an entire programming language in addition to understanding how a typical blockchain works is a time-consuming and tedious process that takes them away from their passion for creating.

This means that unless they commit months, if not years, to advancing their technical knowledge to learn how to deploy smart contracts, they must rely on these marketplaces to limit them. But all this aims to be solved with the help of SmartMint.

Smart contracts and their necessity

Smart contracts are programs designed to run on top of a blockchain network and execute when predetermined conditions are met. They are coded to have a variety of functions and data that reside at a specific address on top of the decentralized blockchain.

Whenever users create an NFT through third-party solutions, the software providers are the ones who write, create, and in turn control these smart contracts.

What this means is that users who wish to maintain full ownership of their NFTs must essentially customize and create their own smart contract and as such own it through their own wallet address linked at the time of creation.

Each smart contract will allow users to have full control and ownership of what NFTs get minted in their collections and can help them manage details on other marketplaces connected to the same wallet. This means that users can manage multiple smart contracts and retain ownership over them

Emboss your NFT on your own smart contract with SmartMint

Pastel Network co-founder Anthony Georgiades explains, “SmartMint is a no-code NFT design platform created and powered by Pastel Network – an application-specific, purpose-built native layer-1 blockchain. SmartMint allows any creator to easily upload their files, add custom properties and attributes and choose the network they will create their NFTs on.”

SmartMint leverages Pastel’s advanced Sense and Cascade protocols.

• Sense combats fraud and copying problems through a revolutionary near-duplicate detection system that assesses the relative rarity of NFTs using ML algorithms. Creators can run their NFTs through the Sense protocol to certify their work as authentic and rare.
• Cascade is a decentralized storage layer that gives advertisers true on-chain NFT permanence, so they never have to worry about sticking to IPFS, navigating the complexities of Arweave, or paying monthly hosting fees for centralized services.

All creators need to do to use it is upload their creative assets, add custom properties and attributes, and then create the NFTs to securely store the metadata and calculate the unique rarity.

They can then list the NFTs for sale on their own personal website or marketplaces like OpenSea or Rarible with just a few clicks.

In terms of different file types supported, SmartMint can handle:

• Images in the form of PNG, JPG, SVG and GIF
• Videos in the form of .MP4 files.

Access and membership to the SmartMint platform is free. Users only need to pay gas fees to create their NFTs on one of the supported networks. Currently supported networks include Ethereum, Polygon and Solana with many more on the way.

Remember that although SmartMint users must list their NFTs on secondary marketplaces in order to sell them, they still have full ownership of the smart contracts associated with their NFTs. If this procedure is done directly on the marketplace, the marketplace will usually maintain this ownership.

Start using SmartMint today