Thanks to the Genies team for publishing this article with us! If you’d like to write a guest post for our blog, let us know at [email protected]
What are Genies?
As the world’s largest avatar technology company, Genies is on a mission to become the identity layer across the internet. Genies is creating a network of platforms and marketplaces where virtual identities lead the way in digital communication, connection, commercialization, and monetization. Soon, you’ll be able to use your Genie across the SDK network, with the first destination being Giphy (launching next month).
Giphy, launching in March
Genie Moments and Unlockables: The Pokémon of Culture
Genies are official avatars for the world’s biggest icons. These tastemakers use their Genies to memorialize life defining moments. For the first time ever, Genies is bringing a consumer first approach to digital art & collectibles, providing real world utility to NFTs – Genie Moments unlock rare Genie Wearables for you to adorn your own Genie and bring them wherever you go.
Shawn Mendes Genie Moment
Welcome to Genies’ Origin Series with Shawn Mendes, Number 2 of 6 Curated Genies Collections.
A message from Shawn…
“I’ve always been fascinated with our current generation of young artists & their ability to express themselves through self-learning and free expression online. From sharing videos on Youtube as a kid, to working with incredible artists & creative directors to visual artists on our tours, I’ve been humbled by the incredible work of young people making change in the world through their passions in music and other art forms.
Inspired by my Wonder album, I’m dropping collectible Genie Moments to raise funds with an aim to amplify, uplift, and empower young digital artists who are using their talent to create positive, social change. With proceeds from all collections going to support the Shawn Mendes Foundation Wonder Grants program, and a new pool of grants we’re launching with Genies to support young digital artists we’re hoping this drop will enable young creators to prosper. In this drop, you can contribute to that cause. More on the Shawn Mendes Foundation below.
Together let’s give a voice to inspiring individuals & foundations on their endeavors to make change & give back!”
The Shawn Mendes Foundation seeks to amplify, empower & uplift youth changemakers, their organizations and their work. SMF works to provide a learning platform for today’s youth, and give direct support to causes they are passionate about. We will encourage people to learn alongside Shawn about the amazing causes they can actively support – and the incredible people working to make a difference in their own lives and in the lives of others.
Check out a preview of the Wonder: Shawn Mendes x Genies drop below:
1 of 1 Auction
To Be Loved By You
Will be live for 23 hours.
***This 1 of 1 Genies Moment unlocks a 1 of 1 ultra rare Shawn Guitar Pick Necklace, a Genies Wearable that can be used for your own Genie.
Genies Statues (3 Piece Set):
I Wonder What It’s Like
Quantity: 50
Price: 1 ETH
***This Limited Edition NFT unlocks a unique and rare Wonder Ring as a Genies Wearable that can be used for your own Genie. Collecting ALL THREE Limited Edition NFTs unlocks the 4th Wonder Ring, an ultra rare Genies Wearable that can be used for your own Genie.
I Love You All So Much
Quantity: 100
Price: 0.75 ETH
***This Limited Edition NFT unlocks a unique and rare Wonder Ring as a Genies Wearable that can be used for your own Genie. Collecting ALL THREE Limited Edition NFTs unlocks the 4th Wonder Ring, an ultra rare Genies Wearable that can be used for your own Genie.
Floating Keys
Quantity: 150
Price: 0.5
***This Limited Edition NFT unlocks a unique and rare Wonder Ring as a Genies Wearable that can be used for your own Genie. Collecting ALL THREE Limited Edition NFTs unlocks the 4th Wonder Ring, an ultra rare Genies Wearable that can be used for your own Genie.
Unlockable content, filterable properties, limited-edition listings, and more…
As word spreads about the rise of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), we’re fielding more and more questions from artists and creators looking to sell their work on the blockchain. For many, the first steps can be tricky to overcome. Crypto wallets? Ethereum? We’ve all been there. Here’s how to turn your art into NFTs and list them for sale on OpenSea.
Key terms
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) – Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are unique, digital items with blockchain-managed ownership. Examples of NFTs include digital art, collectibles, virtual reality items, crypto domain names, ownership records for physical assets, and more. For further information on NFTs and how we got here, read our CEO’s ever-popular overview.
Ethereum – Ethereum is a blockchain, and ETH is the currency used to make transactions on the Ethereum blockchain.
Gas fees – Think of gas fees as Ethereum blockchain transaction costs. OpenSea has no say in setting gas fees – they are determined by supply/demand across the network (blockchain).
Crypto wallet – A crypto wallet is an application or hardware device that allows individuals to store and retrieve digital assets.
Wallet address – Your wallet address is unique. It’s the address people will use when they are sending crypto or NFTs to your crypto wallet.
Secret recovery phrase – Your secret recovery phrase is a list of words that can be used to recover your crypto should you forget your password or lose access to your wallet. When you first begin trading with your wallet, find your secret recovery phrase and back it up somewhere safe, in multiple locations if possible. Don’t store your secret recovery phrase on an online cloud storage service and never share it with anyone.
Collection – A collection is a body of work, like a store or gallery. If you see someone refer to an OpenSea collection as a store or gallery, don’t get confused – it’s all the same. We use the term collection to keep things simple.
User safety
Cryptocurrencies and blockchains offer many benefits but it’s important to do your research on how to safely store funds and digital items before you dive in. The crypto and NFTs in your wallet are your responsibility. Never share your password or seed phrase with anyone.
Setting up your wallet
First up, you’ll need a wallet to store your crypto and NFTs. We recommend using Google Chrome and installing the MetaMask wallet extension. Here are the MetaMask FAQs for reference! Once installed, head to OpenSea, click the icon in the top right corner, then My Profile. Press Sign In and follow the instructions in your wallet.
Creating your collection
At this point, you should see your account page – empty for now, but we’re working on it! Next up, press Create at the top, then My Collections. Click Create underneath ‘Create new collection’, enter your collection’s name and description, and upload an image – we’re not making NFTs at this point; we’re just setting up your collection for you to display your work, and you can edit all this info later on. Hit Add New Items and you’ll be taken to what’s effectively your collection’s back office.
This is where you’ll land after you create your collection
Fine-tuning your collection
There are a few things worth doing before creating your first NFTs. In the image above, you’ll notice a personalized banner. To upload yours, press the pencil icon in the top right. Your banner will look different on different devices, so aim for dimensions around 1400 x 400 and avoid text. To see how the e9art banner looks on OpenSea, click here. The Payouts tab shows pending payments due for secondary sales (yours will be empty for now), and pressing Visit takes you to your public-facing collection.
The payouts page
To add things like social links and update the image/description/name, press Edit. On this page, you’ll also see the option to choose which payment tokens you’d like to accept for your art (leave them as they are if you’re uncertain) and set a secondary sales fee of up to 10%. If you decide you’d like to receive 5% (for example) commission on all future sales of your NFTs, type 5 in the relevant box and enter your wallet address in the field that pops up underneath. Once you’re happy, click Submit Changes and you’ll be taken back to your back office.
Creating NFTs
To create your first NFT, hit Add New Item. On the next page, you’ll see the option to upload metadata such as the image/video/audio file and enter the name of the NFT. Below, you can also add an external link (examples include a high-resolution image file or a personal website) and enter a description.
The first steps of the create new item flow
For now, you can only create one NFT at a time, so if you plan to make five versions of the same piece of work and want potential buyers to know the supply, add the edition number in the stats section as shown below. If you’re keen to make more than one copy of the same item (token ID) instead of creating more individual tokens and noting the edition number in the stats as recommended, you can add ?enable_supply=true to the end of the URL at the top of the page and press enter to reload. After that, it should be possible to edit the supply field. It’s important to note that if you do adjust the supply to 100, for example, you would need to set up 100 individual sales listings (after you’ve created the NFT) with the quantity set to ‘1’. It’s not currently possible to list 100 for sale at once and let buyers choose how many they want to purchase, which is why adjusting the supply is not yet made easy during the creation process.
Properties and levels make it easier for buyers to filter your work when exploring your collection, so add them where relevant. An example of a property would be ‘Year of creation’ – ‘2021’. These fields are all case-sensitive, so be careful with spelling if you’re trying to add the same attribute to multiple NFTs.
As you scroll down the create new item page, you’ll see the option to add properties, level, and stats
It’s also possible to add unlockable content that only the item owner can view. Examples of unlockable content include higher resolution files, contact info for redeeming physical items, access keys, and more.
Unlockable content
Once you’re happy, click Create and sign the message in your wallet. There’s no charge for creating NFTs, so this won’t incur any gas fees (transaction costs). After clicking create, you’ll notice your first NFT sitting pretty underneath the search bar!
Editing NFTs & freezing metadata
If you’d like to edit an item, click the pencil icon in the top right corner of the individual NFT. You can only adjust your tokens when you still own them, so make sure they’re just right before listing them for sale.
Click the pencil icon in the top right corner of the NFT to edit
Editing also allows you to freeze your metadata onto a decentralized storage service. Just head to the bottom of the page and press Freeze.
Freeze your metadata
Tick the box if you’re happy to proceed, then Submit Transaction. While OpenSea doesn’t charge anything, you’ll need to pay a gas fee to complete the process.
You’ll need to pay a gas fee to freeze your metadata
Listing your items for sale
To list your NFTs, head to the public-facing asset page for one of your items and press Sell. Select between a fixed-price listing or auction and set your price. When you’re happy, press Post Your Listing and follow the instructions in your wallet. If you’ve never sold on OpenSea before, you’ll need to pay a gas fee before you can list. This transaction, which essentially creates a personal trading smart contract for your wallet, is currently expensive due to congestion on the Ethereum blockchain but you only have to do it once. If you decide to list the items in a currency that isn’t ETH, you’ll also be asked to approve that token for trading which incurs another (much smaller) gas fee. Again, this is a one-time fee so the second time around you won’t have to pay a cent.
If you’re going through this process when accepting an offer on an item you haven’t previously listed, you’ll be asked to approve WETH (Wrapped ETH, which is used for making offers on OpenSea), as well as the pay gas fee for accepting the offer. Buyers pay the gas for fixed-price listings, sellers pay when accepting offers.
The listing page
If the market is busy and the transaction is taking a while to complete, feel free to close the page and come back to it later. Our system will recognize that your wallet has completed the transaction and you won’t be asked to pay any fees when you go to set up the listing again.
If you don’t have ETH in your wallet, keep reading!
Purchasing Ethereum (ETH)
Search the internet for a reputable and regulated seller in your region and purchase slightly more ETH than the amount quoted when you press ‘Post Your Listing”. The gas fee required for setting yourself up for trading fluctuates between $50 – $250 due to network congestion. We wish we could lower this fee, but we’re powerless until the network is scaled effectively. If you’re keen to track how prices are changing and want to wait for a dip, keep an eye on the numbers on this page. Head back to OpenSea and wait for your wallet to reflect your new balance. Once the funds are in, you can go through the listing process as explained above.
Rankings
Art isn’t about leaderboards, but collectors often use the OpenSea rankings page to discover new and exciting creators. It’s a steep ascent to the top, but lots of traders filter by ‘New’ and ‘7 – DAY CHANGE’, so there’s ample opportunity to get yourself in front of buyers if you can generate a few early sales with some grassroots marketing on your side!
The OpenSea rankings page
And there you have it! Intimidating at first but once you get the hang of it you’ll be cruising the dapp layer in no time.
Each month we’ll be reaching out to new and exciting artists selling their work on OpenSea and asking them to introduce themselves to our growing community. Here’s Emma Tumanyan, Miguelgarest, and Thato!
I, Emma Tumanyan, am an artist from Armenia. I began to draw at the age of eight. I love to paint in the style of expressionism. My paintings mainly express human emotions, state of mind, sometimes social themes or events that happen to us. Very often, when communicating with people, I pay attention not to their words, but to their facial expressions, eye expressions, gestures.
In the center of all my paintings, there is always a person and the accompanying good and evil (both around the person and inside of him). And also I really love the play of colors, sometimes combining the incompatible. I had personal exhibitions in Armenia. Some works are in foreign galleries. Here is my collection of digital works on OpenSea.
I’m a digital artist creating animations in 3D and 2D style. My work is inspired by kawaii aesthetics, pop art, surrealism and video games. I joined the NFT world in December 2020 and it’s already changing my life. My first collection on OpenSea called Cuppas features 36+ cups and containers with mainly tea and coffee as well as other drinks. My defined style of adding faces to inanimate objects, mixed with bright colors, as well as my love for (or addiction to) tea is what brings to these cute animated Cuppas to life. Although it’s a small collection, Cuppas has been an instant success and I’m already working on a new collection that will be even bigger and possibly cuter. More info soon!
Besides Cuppas, I have a collection where I upload retro item inspired animations which I hopes will continue to grow overtime. Check out the Miguelgarest collection here.
Hi, I’m Thato, I’ve been making and publishing digital works for over 2 and have various art collections across the NFT ecosystem. With the Expression Audio NFT collection, I wanted to mix things up and explore the early but growing movement of audio NFTs. The collection is loosely focused on the combination of sorrow/happiness that music often brings and my melodies are generated by chaining a series of Ableton devices together and building patterns based on set parameters.
The overarching direction for the project is as of yet undefined but I think blockchain-backed ownership offers huge opporuninites for musicians and I’m keen to be a part of early explorations in the space! Keep your eyes peeled for more NFTs over the coming weeks and months.
If you’d like to suggest an artist or put your collection forward for consideration, don’t be afraid to let us know on Twitter. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t made any sales yet – we’re keen to spread the word about creators minting their first NFTs too!
Thanks to Justin Khan for publishing this article with us! If you’d like to write a guest post for our blog, let us know at [email protected]
Hi everyone! My name is Justin Kan. Most of you probably know me as the co-founder of Justin.tv, which I turned into Twitch and sold to Amazon for almost $1 billion. However, along the way, I’ve been through the ups and downs in the startup world trying to find my path to happiness through several startups that have succeeded and failed, becoming a partner at Y Combinator, and more.
Now, I’m happy with myself and my journey investing at my venture capital firm, Goat Capital and working on my podcast, The Quest. About a month ago, I decided that I wanted to start sharing my stories, startup advice, throwback stories, live behind-the-scenes content and what helped me achieve happiness with videos on YouTube and have been working with my friend Jen to get those videos out. The response from everyone watching has been amazing.
You’re probably wondering why I’m telling you all this on OpenSea’s blog. What does any of this have anything to do with NFTs?
We decided to mint my videos as NFTs! These will be my very first YouTube videos minted as as NFTs. Each of these stories mean so much to me, but seeing the amazing response from my little corner of the internet on YouTube inspired me to let you all in on the fun.
Whether it’s sharing startup inspiration, finding my path to happiness, just behind the scenes stories from Twitch, Justin.tv, and more, I’ve been having a lot of fun sharing the real stories and backstage look into the ups and downs of my life and learnings. After Jen and I read so many people watching in my comments saying that you invested at 1K subs or that you’re here before the channel blows up, before we get to 1M, I’m humbled and we figured, “hey I gotta make this happen.” So, we launched Certified Justin Kan Stories, so you can collect stories that you love from my YouTube channel.
Think of collecting a Certified Justin Kan Story as collecting an autographed version of my YouTube video. The video itself will continue to live on YouTube, so what you’re purchasing is a digitally signed certificate of this video that is certified and verified by me that is scarce and unique. You could own a Certified Justin Kan Story to collect it and virtually hang it up to show off to friends or inspire yourself, trade it with other Certified Justin Kan Story enthusiasts, and who knows maybe we’ll do something special with Certified Justin Kan Stories holders.
For the first drop, I decided to mint several NFTs. Some are super rare, where there is only 1 copy created. Others are limited edition and have a certain number of copies based on something significant from the video. Here’s what we got:
Be the only one to collect and celebrate my first YouTube video, “Getting arrested with the Reddit CEO proved Justin.tv worked?” In this video, I tell the story of one of my wildest nights in the early days of Justin.tv, where Steve Huffman (CEO of Reddit) and I got arrested! This is incredibly rare and exclusive since there is only 1 copy of this video minted and sold via auction. Bidding will start on Thursday, 2/25 12pm PT and last until Tuesday, 3/2 12pm PT. Please make sure your bid does not expire before Tuesday.
Another rare one is my YouTube video, “How we ALMOST sold Twitch to Google for $1 BILLION.” In this video, I tell the real story of what happened behind-the-scenes in of what it was like to walk away from $1 billion dollars. This is incredibly rare and exclusive since there is only 1 copy of this video minted to represent that $1 billion dollar deal that never was and sold via auction. Bidding will start on Thursday, 2/25 12pm PT and last until Tuesday, 3/2 12pm PT. Please make sure your bid does not expire before Tuesday.
Selling Twitch to Amazon was an emotional rollercoaster. Be one of the few to collect and celebrate my YouTube video, “Selling Twitch to Amazon…the real story.” In this video, I tell the real story of what happened after we walked away from Google and how I found out we sold Twitch to Amazon at Burning Man. To represent our $970 million deal, there will only be 97 copies available. Feel free to make your offers now, but only offers that last until Tuesday, 3/2 12pm PT will be considered. Please make sure your bid does not expire before Tuesday.
Did you know we were THIS close to never starting Twitch at all? Be one of the few to collect and celebrate my YouTube video, “We ALMOST started “TikTok” instead of Twitch?!” In this video, I tell the real story of how we pivoted Justin.tv into Twitch instead of the TikTok-like Socialcam and nearly broke the company in the process. To represent the key moment of us learning from our customers who wanted to make $50 streaming on Twitch, there will be 50 copies available. Feel free to make your offers now, but only offers that last until Tuesday, 3/2 12pm PT will be considered. Please make sure your bid does not expire before Tuesday.
We decided to partner with OpenSea to allow you to safely bid, buy, and trade my NFTs. Now, I can’t promise anything besides bragging rights, but hopefully as more people find our little corner of YouTube, who knows, maybe demand for these NFTs will blow up and I might have more types of NFTs up my sleeve.
So, that’s the story! Long story short, I decided to make each of my YouTube videos an NFT aka a Certified Justin Kan Bragging Right. Even better, you can be one of the first to collect and support the first ever YouTube videos minted as an NFT on OpenSea as a way to be a little part of history.
Now, if you’re curious about the behind-the-scenes on how this all happened, Jen’s going to tell that story.
Whew, it’s been a whirlwind these past couple of days! Let me take you behind-the-scenes from the initial idea to dropping Certified Justin Kan Stories in JUST 7 days.
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Jen! I work with Justin on everything YouTube and TikTok as an Executive Producer/TikTok coach/meme filter, which means anything from teaching Justin how to use TikTok properly over Zoom to coming up with YouTube video ideas, editing all the content, and coming up with fun ideas to try to engage with everyone watching. At the same time, I’ve also been following the NFT space closely ever since I learned about the space last year as a super newbie. After learning about how artists like Beeple and Hashmasks, musicians like 3LAU, and even Logan Paul were all getting into NFTs in a different way, I was especially excited about how creators could get in the space and engage with their audience
As Justin mentioned, we finally launched his YouTube channel a month ago to share his inspiring, behind-the-scenes stories from his startup journey through Justin.tv, Twitch, and more (and trust me, we have plenty more stories and new content coming soon). With both TikTok and YouTube, with all of the amazing support, it’s been growing super quickly. Justin has passed 20,000 subscribers on YouTube and over 150,000 followers on TikTok.
BUT, just a week ago, when Justin reached 10,000 followers, I made this little animation for fun.
It got me and Justin thinking.
“How do we let our audience in on the fun?”
“People always comment that they’re ‘investing’ in this channel before it blows up. What if that could happen?”
“Should we mint our content as NFTs?”
“Has anyone actually made their YouTube videos as NFTs?”
So I started to look into different marketplaces, protocols, and different examples of how digital artists, musicians, communities, NBA TopShots, and even individuals like Mark Cuban were dropping their NFTs. For example, let’s look at NBA TopShots
Just 3 days later, I tweeted this:
I wanted to make sure that if we launched an NFT that we tried our best to do it right. Basically, I was looking for a best practices resource on how creators can be thoughtful with their curation, heard anecdotes about balancing expensive rare items vs cheaper drops, so more people can participate, trying to figure out how to explain things in an accessible way, and if it even made sense to drop the YouTube videos as NFTs.
It was kinda intimidating with artists creating such beautiful artwork, was there room in the space for Justin’s stories? Would people think it’s a good idea? While these stories were close to Justin’s heart, would anyone want to collect these stories for themselves?
Hence, just a little while later, a call for some advice.
Just a few minutes later, Devin, the CEO here at OpenSea replied in the comments and then, we got on a call…at 1:30am in the morning…ooof.
After Devin spent over an hour walking me through all these questions and more, we decided to do Justin’s first NFT drop on OpenSea. Here were some of my questions that I asked:
What’s the difference between the different marketplaces and protocols? What are the pros and cons of each of them? Which would be the best fit for our videos?
What the heck is gas and who pays for it?
How do people decide how many copies to mint per NFT?
Do you have any advice for pricing an NFT? Should we do an auction or a set price?
The next day, we got our first NFT up on OpenSea. Alex from OpenSea helped me get larger files up on OpenSea, walked me through the different types of auctions, showed me examples and numbers that we could base our auctions and set prices on.
7 days after our initial idea. 3 days since we got help from the OpenSea team and put the first one up on OpenSea. Now, we’ve launched Justin’s first ever YouTube videos as NFTs and I guess we will see what happens!
The main point that I want to get across while telling this story is that we couldn’t have done this ourselves. What strikes me the most about NFTs is the strength of the community and how helped everyone was in helping a newbie. Besides the OpenSea team, here were some key people who helped along the way:
Phil, James, Alex, and Cameron who agreed to host an NFT and social tokens talk in the community that I run all about the creator economy. This is when I first really understood the appeal and potential of NFTs, so I’m so grateful! Also, I want to shoutout Jess for reassuring me that this was a cool idea.
Everyone who spoke at the nightly NFT room in Clubhouse and the artists that inspired us and paved the way, 3LAU, Beeple, Hashmasks, and many more.
At OpenSea, we’re excited to support a growing, cross-chain ecosystem of user-owned digital assets. We’ve been very impressed with the work that the Tezos ecosystem has done to further NFT standards, and we are proud to announce our collaboration with the Tezos ecosystem, which will enable the burgeoning Tezos NFT community to view and trade Tezos-based FA2 NFTs on OpenSea.
Our first integration will allow users to explore Tezos FA2 NFTs on OpenSea, with support for peer-to-peer trading soon after. Users will have the ability to log-in to OpenSea and instantly view their Tezos NFTs alongside NFTs on other blockchains. Lastly, we also plan to integrate Tezos to embeddable, allowing anyone to embed a Tezos NFT in a website or blog post, and easily share a Tezos NFT directly to Instagram.
Why Tezos?
Our first interactions with the Tezos community were centered around feedback from our experiences with ERC-721 and recommendations on how to design a more powerful token standard for NFTs. Since then, the Tezos community has produced exactly that in the FA2 token standard. Similar to Ethereum’s ERC-1155 standard which has been seeing significant growth and interest, FA2 supports a wide range of token types (e.g. fungible, non-fungible, non-transferable, etc.) all in one interface. We’re thrilled that we were able to contribute to this effort.
Furthermore, we also find Tezos attractive because of its under-the-radar growth in developer activity. Tezos development teams are rapidly advancing Tezos with network upgrades every three months. This upgrade cadence is possible because Tezos significantly lowers the coordination costs of executing network upgrades in a decentralized manner at scale. In November, the Delphi upgrade reduced gas consumption by ~75%, and the next upgrade, Edo (set to go live on Feb. 13), adds an experimental new feature called Tickets (read about it here), a native permissions primitive that enables safer composability.
Through its efficient upgrade process, Tezos is able to effectively incorporate innovative technologies and evolve over time. This is beginning to attract application developers and product users frustrated with the exorbitant fees on other blockchains. Some promising projects in the Tezos ecosystem include OpenMinter, Stably’s USDS stablecoin, Kolibri, Spruce’s decentralized identity products, Dexter and QuipuSwap AMMs, Wrap Protocol, Homebase, Tezos Domains, and more.
We’re extremely excited to work with the Tezos ecosystem on this project and are eager to welcome the Tezos NFT community to OpenSea.
Devin Finzer
Devin Finzer is the co-founder and CEO of OpenSea.
From metaverse land purchases to art investments, this is your monthly roundup of the biggest sales in the NFT space. If January was anything to go by, 2021 should be a wild ride for blockchain-backed digital goods. CryptoPunks, SuperRare, Gala Games (Mirandus), and Decentraland all feature.
The world’s first and largest digital marketplace for crypto collectibles and
non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Buy, sell, and discover exclusive digital assets.
