Assumptions

a. You know what an NFT is
b. You know how to purchase cryptocurrencies 
c. You posses or have access to a non-custodial wallet

If one or more of the above are not true, this article isn't for you yet!
I would highly encourage looking up those terms, having a little play, and coming back to this later.

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I recently read this article on buying NFTs across "the 6 leading blockchain ecosystems". It covers Ethereum, Solana, WAX, Tezos, Binance, and Flow which are all unique and fantastic in their own ways. Yet the piece seems to have missed out a few tactics i've found useful on ethereum and tezos that are worth exploring. So, lets dive into them.   

Tactics

Ethereum

Security

Collecting ETH NFTs is a wondrous endeavour, its the OG chain, but it comes with risks. Since ETH has accrued the most value it is the place where scammers are most profligate. Clicking the wrong link and connecting your wallet could lead to your resources being plundered. Further, no legitimate party will ever ask for your seed phrase or password.

One of the main security protocols to guard against this is to get a hard wallet for storing private keys. Another security measure, which i've added to my personal arsenal, is to use a different wallet and browser for any half dodgy minting processes (i've opted for XDefi Wallet on the Decentr browser). If anything were to go wrong that wallet is pretty sparse so I wouldn't necessarily miss what they took. 

Gas

The other inevitability, until the hallowed day we move from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake (ETH2), is that you will likely be spending an extortionate amount on GAS (www.fees.wtf to check your spending so far). I have spent nearly 3ETH on transaction fees alone in 2021 which is a bitter pill to swallow! There are a couple of tricks of the trade to minimise these expenses. 

1. During minting popular drops there will be a gas war. This means there is more demand for transactions than the supply of miners to enable them, so the highest offers will have the fastest transaction confirmations.
   - For basic users (like me) DONT PLAY THIS GAME. It is painful to have a transaction fail because you didn't offer enough ETH - you lose the cash and get nothing! Wait till after the NFT has minted and pick some up on the secondary market. Maybe there will be a markup, but it will be less than you will likely lose on GAS. Especially if the art isn't revealed till much later (once it's revealed you lose the chance of getting rare's near mint price).
   - For advanced users: try this tweet thread and let us know how it goes in the comments!
   
   
2.  If you have a popular NFT premise or collection and you would like to save your adoring fans from bleeding cash on transactions consider using tools like a whitelist (with long luxurious periods of time to decide when to mint) or a raffle or a mint pass or a bad ass smart contract.
   
   
3. When gas is high (busy periods in the day) you can actually just set the base fee (GWEI) to circa 100 (don't mess with the priority fee) and leave the transaction to execute later whilst you are sleeping and gas calms down. One caveat with this is that the transaction will stay pending and encumber any further purchases you want to make until it is resolved. You can pay more to speed it up however if you want, or cancel it. 

Minting

Very often with the popular ones websites and servers crash with the overload of thousands of people refreshing their pages constantly trying to ape in on a FOMO level NFT drop. I'll be shocked if this hasn't already happened to you, and if not - it will soon. One handy trick is to mint directly from the contract on Etherscan (visual walkthrough on twitter thread). 

1. source etherscan from official-links (important - usually on the project discord)
2. click contract with the green checkmark
3. click "write contract" right below
4. then "connect to web3" with the red button
5. connect your metamask to it (make sure the it says "connected [eth address]" with green circle at the start
6. scroll to "3." and click it
7. for "mintCeramics" you put in the eth amount for however many qty you want (ex: .079 = 1, .158 = 2, .237=3, etc)
8. "_numberOfTokens (uint256)" you write the amount you want, (ex: 1, 2, 3, 4, etc)
9. make sure the math adds up then click the blue box that says "write" and confirm it! 

Tezos

Tracking

If you are anything like me then tezos (tez) nft's are some of your favourite to collect - I have over 200 as of the end of 2021! Tracking floor prices, mint prices, sales velocity etc isn't super easy to do on native platforms like HEN or OBJKT. Its also not particularly easy on wallets like Kukai and Temple which I use. NFT portfolio trackers I would recommend are: https://nftbiker.xyz/, www.artcentral.io, https://glry.xyz/   

Minting

Every popular blockchain ecosystem is going to have oversubscribed drops, and tezos is not immune. 

- For basic users one easy trick (when using temple) is to change nodes from the Tezos Mainnet (default) to one of the others. By virtue of not being on the default node, where the majority of people are, there will be less traffic and a higher likelihood of transactions processing. 

- For medium users 

1. Go to better call dev and search for the [name of project] crowdsale. 
2. Once you find the contract, ensure it's the MAINNET version. Do NOT use anything else as it is a test contract or a scam attempt.
3. Go to the interact tab
4. Select mint from the options on the right tab
5. Enter the amount you want to mint in the mint field
6. Ignore source
7. Enter the amount of MUTEZ necessary to mint the amount you want. 1 tezos = 1 million mutez 
8. Click execute and use your kukai wallet
9. Approve transaction in Kukai (You can set gas if you want but mileage may vary with usefulness)
10. Boom you got a NFT

- For advanced users, set up your own node, and please let us know how easy this actually is in the comments!

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Those are the main two blockchains [covered in the "six leading blockchains article"] for which I have supplementary gems to share.

I have collected NFTs on other "runner up" blockchains such as algorand, cardano, zilliqua, vechain etc which are all magical in their own way. Hit me up in the comments to cover the tactics, marketplaces, wallets and cryptocurrencies for these ecosystems in the next article.

Useful in General

- Farmfol - https://farmfol.io/ - tracking portfolio cross chain
- Fractional Art - https://fractional.art/ - fractionalised NFTs
- Zerion - https://app.zerion.io/ - portfolio tracker i use most
- Zappier - https://zapper.fi/ - gamified portfolio tracker
- Defipulse - https://defipulse.com/ - decentralised finance leaderboard
- APY vision - https://apy.vision/ - liquidity pools
- Non Fungible - https://nonfungible.com/ - NFT leaderboard
- Icy Tools - https://icy.tools/ - trending mints 
- Step Finance - https://step.finance - solana portfolio tracker

Thanks for reading! 

1. Give me a shout on twitter.
2. Check out my mum’s digital generative art.
3. Check out my Genesis NFT collection.
4. Join my mailing list

Signing off! papajams.eth