NFTs for Regular People
NFTs might make sense to those who can afford to spend $200 to send $50, but for the rest of us who have a hard time making that make sense, Rockydennis Presents buying NFTs.
This isn’t a guide, so much as a newbie intro by a newbie for a newbie. Just sharing some experience and insight, so you don’t end up spending $200 to send $50….again.
It’s been a while since we’ve covered anything on cryptocurrency - largely because we haven’t done much with it. Mostly because we can’t get on BetFury anymore. We’ve mostly just stuck to our daily routine of hitting Cointiply and Pipeflare faucets and calling it a day.
Recently, Pipeflare announced a pre-sale of NFTs that offer special bonuses, including access to a Mystery Faucet. Obviously, we must gain access to the mystery faucet. A Matic faucet is just Matic, but the mystery faucet could be anything, it could even be Matic! The mystery box could be anything, it could even be a boat! As you can see, our hands are clearly tied in the matter. Not buying the Pipeflare Pyro NFTs is not an option.
Alright, so for those who joined us last year for learning how to send 30 cents of Tron to a friend will remember that it wasn’t that simple. It was, and is, eventually, once the Tron is on the Tron network, where can just stake it and happily collect more Tron….except now we get KLV instead. Which would be fine, except when we burn Tron because there isn’t enough energy to collect the Klever…
Anyway, point being, it was confusing and difficult and ultimately not super rewarding. Well, my friends, buying NFTs is pretty much the same thing. Except not as bad.
Rockydennis Presents starts from the point of already having some familiarity with wallets, including pre-existing accounts such as with Coinbase. If you’re totally, totally, 100% new to crypto and have no clue what’s going on, we’re not covering that here. You’re in good company, we have no clue what we’re doing (basically it’s all about memorizing which buttons not to press).
Things You Need to Do Before Joining Us on Magical NFT Learning Tour
Be able to buy Eth and other coins, and send them to places.
Once you can do that, you should have enough understanding to know that sending Ethereum costs a fortune for those of us that work for a living. You’ll also have the pre-requisite knowledge-ish to grasp the next, and somewhat easier steps.
Nearly every guide you found on Google is talking about MetaMask. MetaMask is pretty much the most compatible wallet, and the most invasive. It’s very upfront about having total control of your computer. It’s also super easy to turn off when not in use. Coinbase wallet has browser extensions for Brave and Chrome (Cryptotab is Chrome), so you can buy NFTs that way.
They’re both easy to use wallets, but Coinbase is a lot more secure. They’re not going to be able to recover Eth you lost on failed transfers, or the Bitcoin you sent to a Nigerian prince. However, you’re going to be a lot safer from hijackers, worms, trojans, etc, especially keyloggers.
This doesn’t mean Coinbase is 100% unbreakable, nor does it mean that MetaMask is like waving a wallet around in Highland Park.
On that note, you’ll want to give Metamask full access to all websites. And pin the extension. Full access alleviates issues that many people have with importing tokens. Pinning the extension is so we don’t forget to turn that motherlover off when we’re done with it.
We Bought Three NFTs
We’ll get to the Pipeflare story in a moment, let’s start with the easy one from Cryptotab. Cryptotab has some sort of promo going on whereby the NFT you buy gives you Premium status and 100,000 h/s bonus mining. That’s a lot, especially if you run CT on max when you’re at work. It cost about $160 for the NFT, and another $30 in gas. So basically, buy $200 of Ethereum.
If you can make your purchase at like, 5 am EST, the gas will usually be lower, but not always. “Gas” is the fee you pay for using Ethereum…like a sales tax or transaction fee. Yep, that’s how it works.
The primary benefit of the CryptoTab Mining NFT is that in the spring is that you’ll be able to trade it for a token worth twice as much as the original price you paid. So if we can keep our gas costs down, we might just make a few bucks.
Once you have the actual NFT in your wallet, you can move it just like crypto.
…Cryptotab provides a guide on this, and it’s not too rough to get through. FYi, OpenSea is totally legit and trustworthy. A lot of the crypto space seems sus, because a lot of it is, but OpenSea is like…the main NFT platform.
And the other two? The Pyroflare Dragons or whatever?
These were a bit tougher to get, but it didn’t need to be. If you’re super paranoid like me, or just don’t trust yourself to close tabs and apps after staying up all night drinking Rockstar, you can use a separate browser. I used Brave and MetaMask. Pipeflare gives a bonus for Brave users, and MetaMask is the only way you can mint the NFTs.
You can move the NFT to any wallet, and eventually it won’t make a difference, but for right now since you’re minting the NFT, Pipeflare needs to interface with a Web 3.0 wallet, and can only handle MetaMasks for now,
“But Rocky!”, you say, “I just wanted to buy the thing! What’s this minting?”
Hey, you’re preaching to the choir. We don’t care about minting, and don’t particularly need to. What we know is that the dragons are on pre-sale for 55 Matic.
hmm…we need Matic. Well, I bought some on my Coinbase wallet…which was dumb to begin with. It costs gas to move from Coinbase (website) to Coinbase Wallet (phone app or browser extension). Whatever, now to send the Matic to MetaMask…easy peezy.
Okay, the Matic has left Coinbase wallet and…Metamask is empty. What…oh okay, Metamask needs to be on the polygon network., obviously.
No, that wasn’t it…
I should have just bought the Matic on Metamask. I still was about to hit the same problem, it just would have saved me one transaction.
If you’re having your own investigative adventure, your money isn’t gone. The MATIC from Coinbase is ERC-20, we need….ERC-712 … what?? I think that’s right. It’s now a token on the wrong network.
After going to etherscan and looking up our metamask address we see that the contract exists, and we can use that address to import the token into Metamask and then wonder why it shows a zero balance. Then when we go to the ethscan (different site) and see that, indeed, our MATIC is recognized as existing as a token on the polygon network.
After stumbling through that mess and a bunch of Yahoo! search results that are all basically the same webpage copy/pasted (and mostly about Binance SmartChain for some reason), we end up at wallet.polygon.com/bridge
What The Fu…dgsicle
Okay so we want to convert our Ethereum blockchain Matic…okay dropdown menu… Oh KICK ASS! Our balance shows! Sweet, select Matic, bridge to Polygon….okay looks right. We, of course, need to cover a small Eth fee.
And now we wait forever, re-check our guides, check Metamask, and…we can’t confirm. It’s greyed out.
Spoiler alert - We need Ethereum on the Ethereum network in our Metamask wallet. $50 ought to do it.
Estimated gas fee is under $30, which includes both fees (one for transaction, one for confirmation..wtf). Should be fine.
Well, $10 gets spent, a progress bubble gets filled, and we stall….and stall….the thing won’t go. Then we notice that it can’t go because the maximum possible gas fee is like $60. It’s like a bid/ask spread, or like needing collateral to sell a near-expiration call at a lower strike than the LEAP….
Now, had we just done the smart thing from the get go, and bought the $100 instead of $50… (which we even thought about, knowing that we’ve struggled with Eth transfers in the past), this would be almost over. NOPE.
We decided to fiddle with the settings that control the minimum/maximum gas fee…which also correlates directly to the probability of a successful transaction. Whatevs, we’ll just try again after it fails.
….and now we’re out of Eth. And the transaction isn’t finished. It’s halfway to being bridged, apparently, stuck in limbo.
WE PAID FOR EACH FAILED TRANSACTION
There wasn’t enough gas money, but it still tried to fill the tank (that’s…such a bad analogy). Imagine if you put 5 gallons of gas in the shittiest car ever made that requires 10 gallons to go from point A to point B. Now you turn the key, the car doesn’t go, and your 5 gallons of gas are evaporated. Poof, gone.
Hey that’s not a half-bad analogy after all.
Don’t fiddle with the settings, just have enough Ethereum.
If you’re wondering, yes, we had to put more Ethereum into our Metamask. This time $100, no fiddling. Transaction and confirmation worked, and only cost us $20 total. Now we can return to Pipeflare and mint our NFTs…yay. Honestly I don’t even care anymore, I just want to be done.
This sounds really dumb and stupid, and I don’t care about Pipeflare or Cryptotab.
You might still be interested in Opensea. You can turn pretty much any media file into an NFT and then sell it on the open market. We made a Rockydennis NFT just for fun. It’s not for sale….yet. Pipeflare also allows you to make and sell NFTs. Pipeflare is a one-time fee (once forever, as in, never again) and Opensea…I am not sure, we didn’t get that far. Probably some kind of gas fee.
At the end of the day, we have a few NFTs on Opensea, one in our Coinbase wallet, and are comfortable moving between both of them. We have an extra $80 of Eth in our Metamask for future use, and 1.99 MATIC leftover. No Mystery Faucet…yet.
I love spending $200…wait…$300…well, $220?… I love spending money today for things that might be available at an undetermined point in the future.
Update :DateDescription2022-02-22 15:54:22 Mystery Faucet Just Launched. Sweet.….
…
….
it’s freaking Shibu. /wrist
TLDR
MetaMask can only hurt you when you let it.
Opensea is super user friendly and intuitive.
Put an extra $100 of Ethereum into whatever wallet you’re using, for each transaction you intend to make.
(A failed transaction is worse than paying for gas during network congestion).
