BUANASENI

HOW TO GET STARTED WITH NFT USING A MALAYSIAN NFT PLATFORM, PENTAS.IO

By Johan Ishak

22 January 22

NFT is the short form for Non-Fungible Token. Basically, in the conventional art world, you will have an original, say, painted using acrylic or oil. Then, an artist may make copies of that art in Print on Canvas format. Obviously, the original art carries higher value. Now, take this concept and apply it to digital art. In the digital art world it is easy to copy and pirate. Hence, you will need a method to make a digital art piece unique like how a physical original oil painting is. The best method is by using the blockchain technology akin to how the blockchain is able to make unique any crypto currency for it to have the status of monetary currency.

So, how do we do this NFT thing? There are many methods and applications but here, we shall use the ones familiar to Malaysians locally. The below are the steps:

Step 1: Download the phone application KuCoin. KuCoin is a network for crypto currencies where you can buy and sell. It is akin to a money changer for the normal fiat currencies such as USD or Ringgit.

Step 2: Register your account in KuCoin.

Step 3: In KuCoin, whatever you do (eg. Withdraw, Trade, etc) you will need to pay fees using KuCoin's native crypto, KCS. So, buy KCS there using your credit card, say KCS worth USD50.

Step 4: In KuCoin, buy crypto BNB using your credit card, say BNB worth USD100. If you cannot buy crypto BNB because of market scarcity, buy crypto USDT first and keep. USDT is not the same as USD. USDT it is a crypto. Then, later, use USDT to trade it into BNB. To trade, you must ensure that your USDT has been transferred from the main account to the trading account first.

Step 5: Download the phone application Metamask. Metamask is an e-wallet for crypto currencies.

Step 6: Register your account in Metamask. Click on your Metamask chain identification until it says Copied.

Step 7: Go back to KuCoin and go to your BNB balance. Withdraw it into your Metamask. You will need to put in your Metamask chain identification for which you will need to copy in Metamask as mentioned earlier. One important note, you must always ensure that your wallet in Metamask is being put under the right selection of network that supports the crypto that you are working on. In this case, we are using BNB. BNB is supported by Binance Smart Chain ('BSC' or 'Smart Chain'). Hence, you will need to ensure that your Metamask wallet is in BSC or Smart Chain mode. Some other NFT platforms may use other cryptos. For example, OpenSea uses the crypto Ethereum ('ETH') for its operating crypto for which, you will need to ensure the Metamask wallet to be in ERC mode, the network that supports ETH. 

Step 8: Go to Pentas.io website and create your account. Pentas.io is an NFT platform where you can create (mint) NFTs and sell or buy from others.

Step 9: Go back to Metamask and go to the option, Browser. Type in Pentas.io and it will search for Pentas.io. Select Pentas.io. It will then bring you to Pentas.io on the web. Pentas.io works on web basis and not on phone application basis. There, click Connect Wallet, and it will link your Metamask to Pentas.io.

Step 10: At your Pentas.io top right where you had clicked Connect Wallet earlier, it will have your Metamask account name. Click that and in the dropdown menu, click Create/Mint NFT.

Step 11: It will prompt a form where you will have to attach your digital art that is intended to be the NFT. Put the title and the description of the art. In the description, you may want to put a disclaimer to say that for each of the NFTs, there is a hard copy Print on Canvas where it will be a physical art show for the said digital art as printed on canvas. This way, you can still behave like a conventional artist and not being sued for printing any of your art images that has been sold in NFT format. Then click create.

Step 12: It will prompt you to confirm to accept charges for minting NFT that it will deduct from your BNB balance in Metamask. You will also need to put 5% as the royalty which means, if a buyer of your NFT sells to others, you, as the original seller or creator, gets 5% for the subsequent sale (or sales). Click to confirm.

Step 13: Wait for 10 minutes or more as Pentas.io has a team to do censorship in case you put pornographic images for which they will reject. Go and have a smoke or something first. Then, click at the same top right area mentioned earlier and in the dropdown, click Profile or Collection to see your NFT that you had just created.

Step 14: You will see that your NFT has RESERVE written at the bottom, which means that you have not yet opened it for the market (Pentas.io visitors) to buy. Click on it and it will ask you to put your price and when you confirm, it will charge your BNB balance again. Generally if the NFT is priced at 0.5BNB, it is equivalent to the range of USD200 to USD250 depending on the market price of BNB relative to USD.

Step 15: Go smoking again. Then check again using the same top right area as mentioned, and you will see that your NFT has a price.

Step 16: Promote your NFTs on the social media (twitter is the main NFT promotion space) by making references to @Pentas.io as well as hashtags #nft #nftcommunity and many more.

Step 17: Not sure what happens yet as I am still waiting for someone to buy my NFT on Pentas.io HaHaHaHa! So, if you want to know from Step 17 onwards, buy my NFT under the name johanishak on Pentas.io. I am sure we are all keen to know how do we convert the BNB as a result of the sale of NFTs back into a fiat currencies like USD.

Whatever it is, DO NOT use the same image again for further minting of NFTs. The whole purpose of NFT is to lock a particular digital art as a unique piece by having a blockchain attached to it. It is the so called ethics for NFT minting. So, imagine doing NFT for a whole range of digitalisable art such as music, photography or even literature such as poems. In fact, come to think of it, NFT technology can replace the conventional land titles, plane tickets or even passports for the immigration activities. The world becomes limitless suddenly and what you see in the movie Matrix or the series Black Mirror, might just come to reality pretty soon. Amazing, but yet, scary.