Before I share a simple example of the conversion of Digital Art to NFT, it would be good to get a basic understanding of the Digital Asset space. Terms like Ether, GAS, and Minting have completely different meanings in Digital Artspace.

A Digital Asset can be any digital items like photos, music, videos, tweets, memes, etc. Assets are identified in digital space using unique tokens called NFT. A Non-Fungible Token (NFT) is used to represent ownership of unique items. The items can be physical items or digital assets like digital arts, videos, etc. NFT is stored on a blockchain. It can’t be interchangeable or not fungible. Blockchain is a decentralized database that is managed by a network of peer-to-peer computers. As it is decentralized, there is no central authority (for most blockchains, though private blockchains do exist). Every transaction on the blockchain exists in blocks that have been verified and validated by the network of computers. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and the transaction data. To manage the NFTs a digital wallet is required which is the digital version of the pocket wallet. It holds cryptocurrencies and crypto assets including NFT. It is necessary for making transactions in the metaverse.

This gives an understanding that an NFT is required to buy and sell digital assets. NFT marketplace is where sellers are connected to potential buyers. Ether (ETH) is the currency that the Ethereum blockchain provides for buying and selling of NFTs. GAS is the transaction fee that is collected by the blockchain platform. Minting is an action that brings an item into existence on the blockchain, and it costs gas to do so.

With this background, let us see some simple steps to covert a Digital Art to an NFT, for use in Digital Market Place.

• Create a digital wallet – You can use Coinbase (https://www.coinbase.com/), MetaMask (https://metamask.io/) or some other popular solution
• Add money to the wallet using the interface available in the digital wallet solution
• Choose the NFT marketplace where our NFT will be listed for selling. The most popular marketplaces are OpenSea – https://opensea.io/, and Rarible – https://rarible.com. OpenSea has more  GAS fees compared to Rarible. Polygon and flow blockchain are some of the free market places
• Link your digital wallet account with the NFT marketplace
• Once your account is ready for the transaction then create the NFT. Select the Digital Art for conversion to NFT and use the NFT marketplace platform for conversion

Let us now create first NFT using OpenSea. OpenSea supports many file formats JPG, PNG, GIF, SVG, MP4, WEBM, MP3, WAV, OGG, GLB, and GLTF. But the preferred format is PNG. There is an option to create collectible and single NFT. In our scenario let’s go with Single NFT. Follow the below steps for creating NFT:

• Create a new item by selecting Create option from the OpenSea home screen
• Upload your digital art
• Provide the necessary details like name, description and no. of items that need to be minted
• Select the blockchain. In our scenario, we will select Ethereum and then click Create
• After creating NFT you can share your NFT on social media if you want