Tool Tip: Minting NFTs on Manifold

This weekend, I was hanging out with my best friend. He dabbles in crypto from my explanations but is overall out of the loop here.

We've worked on dozens of art projects together before, and during our latest chat the topic of NFTs came up. Later he asked me: "where's the best place to drop today?"

It's a good question. Ultimately, the answer depends on the asker.

Of course, if you're just looking to casually share some of your creations like how you would on Instagram, I'd recommend the streamlined UX of Rodeo, which centers around 24-hour open edition Base NFT mints.

If instead you want a hub where you can formally launch multiple distinct creative projects, and with lots of DIY flexibility around release styles and more, the reigning star is Manifold.

What stands out to me about Manifold is that it's proven and dependable:

• The NFTs I minted there in 2022 still populate normally in my "Studio" dashboard. In contrast, other NFTs I minted from around that timeframe, like my early Zora drops, have effectively disappeared.
• Some of my favorite artists, like Gremplin, have been using Manifold to great effect for years. For his part, Gremplin's helped popularize Manifold's "burn-to-redeem" feature, where you must destroy a specific NFT to collect another.
• Plus, the NFT that Coinbase just bought for 25M USDC to revive Cobie's Up Only podcast for another season was minted on Manifold. The NFT wasn't the main thing here, but the buy-and-burn shows Manifold is dependable even for massive sales.

But beyond its solidness, Manifold is something I'd recommend to my friend or any up-and-coming onchain creators because it offers lots of insights and options.

When you sign into the main studio.manifold.xyz hub, you immediately land on an overview page that shows you any contracts, revenues, and NFTs that you've created on Manifold. It's easy to keep track of many projects simultaneously using just this page alone.

There's also a slick "Profile" page that you can fully customize and a "Collectors" page that gives you a bird's-eye view of all the addresses that are holding your tokens + a holders snapshot tool.

Yet the real magic of Manifold comes from all the different minting functionalities that it affords creators.

If you click on the "Create" button in the upper right corner of your Studio dashboard, you'll be brought to an interface that looks like so:

This area is where you can setup custom NFT releases however you want. The options you have here include...

1 of 1s

• Token creator (ERC-721) — "Your standard 1/1 token mint. Mint one token to yourself or another wallet. List it for sale anywhere at a later date."
• Batch token creator (ERC-721) — "Mint many 1/1s each with unique media and metadata. Mint the tokens to a wallet or airdrop them to a group of wallets. List them individually for sale anywhere at a later date."

Editions

• Collector mint page (ERC-721 & ERC-1155) — "Publish a page that allows collectors to mint work as an open or limited edition. Tokens aren't minted until collectors mint. Tokens can be revealed to unique metadata after publishing."
• Token creator (ERC-1155) — "Mint X number of tokens to yourself or other wallets. List them for sale."

Burn Redeem

• Same chain redemption — "Burn tokens for a new token on the same chain of your choice."
• Upgrade chain redemption — "Upgrade tokens by burning L2 tokens for a new L1 token."

More

• Marketplace listing — "List an existing token for sale or auction on Manifold's zero-fee marketplace."
• Contract — "Create your own sovereign Creator Contract. A smart contract you can reuse indefinitely for minting and creating drops."
• Burn for physical — "A physical product page where shoppers must burn NFTs and optionally pay ETH to buy IRL products from you."
• Blind mint — "A mint page for a new set of editioned ERC-1155 tokens that randomly reveal according to rarities and tiers you define (e.g. trading cards, figurines)."

As you can see, you can basically run any format of NFT drop through Manifold, and you can manage all your different releases here in a single hub, side by side.

Sometimes you don't know what your next creative project is going to be, and that's the nice thing about Manifold. It doesn't lock you in any which way, you have the freedom to release 1/1s next to open editions and in tandem with physical products, etc.

So yes, all things considered, Manifold is the best place to drop NFTs today if you're optimizing for flexibility. It's got the tools, you bring the vision. If you've got a project you're cooking up and want to dive deeper here, be sure to check out the Manifold Help Center to learn more!