NFTs definitely exploded in popularity in 2021, but in 2022, more people than ever will buy their first NFT. When you first learn about NFTs, you’ll likely end up at a marketplace like OpenSea and you can definitely start trading these digital products, but the biggest gains are typically found as projects go live in a process called minting.
There’s a lot involved in getting on these whitelists, but if you jump through the necessary hoops, there can be a big payday at the end. In this post, we’ll focus on how to get on the whitelist for a new NFT project.
Step 1: Find an NFT project
There are literally thousands of projects that you can be part of, choosing which ones is the difficult part. There are projects that are scams and projects that will lose you money, so selecting the right one is not easy, so do your research.
Personally, I leverage social networks like Twitter and TikTok, with a search on TikTok, or follow creators in the space, to get an understanding of what’s hot, then dive deeper.
Each project will typically have the following:
- Project Website
- Discord
- OpenSea Collection (after minting)
Step 2: Find the project website
The first thing to understand about NFT projects is that they really fall into one of two camps. The first type is really simply just an art project and you will be able to trade that art, just like digital trading cards.
The second is a project where the team is working on utility as a result of having an NFT from their collection. This may be in the form of a digital character, piece of clothing, or plot of land for the Metaverse, typically a virtual reality environment or game that is yet to be built.
The utility can be offered in other ways, like the ability to buy merchandise at discounted pricing, or provide access to special events in person, or online, providing access to people or entertainment you otherwise would not have.
Visiting and reviewing the project website will also give you access to the timeline the project is working to, who’s involved, and can give a great insight into the quality of the work.
Personally, I dive into the designer’s previous work or focus heavily on the samples of NFTs provided to understand if, at a fundamental level, I like the art or not. Something the crypto punks is massive, but the 8-bit cartoons really don’t much for me, it would be a pure economics decision, while something like Hapebeast and Kitty Crypto Gang is high-resolution 3D models that I love the look of.
Step 3: Join the Discord
You may already have a discord account, but if you want in on an NFT whitelist, you better get one.
Spam and bots on Discord are a huge problem, so when you click a link to an NFT project on Discord, the first thing you’ll do is jump through hoops to prove you’re human.
You’ll likely land in a welcome channel where the only thing to do is use an emoji to react to a post that explains the rules or terms of use (i.e. no ads, spam, links etc). This will then unlock the rest of the Discord channels for the project, but some projects can use more intense verification that you’re a human.
Next, you’ll look through the channels, and after a few, you’ll start to see a familiar set of channels for things like:
- how-to-whitelist
- sharing-proof
- announcements
- sneak-peek
- official-links
- how-to-mint
- General discussion/chat
It is important to watch and monitor how active people are in the Discord, and watch the content they’re posting for clues about demand.
Step 4: Pimp the project
It seems that most projects are turning to fairly spammy behaviour to ensure their projects to become popular, and therefore create demand for the minted NFTs.
While it sucks these are being made mandatory requirements to be on the whitelist to mint NFTs in the collection, there’s no way around it, you’ll need to get comfortable with this if you want in.
Here’s an example of what projects are requiring:
- Invite 15 peoples to the Discord server. We are looking for high quality and engaging members.
- Interact with the community on the server, reach LEVEL 5 and add “┃BeHype” on your Discord name and profile picture
- Post a tweet about the project and mention us BeHype_nft. Please share the URL of your tweet in tweet-proof.
- To increase your chances of being whitelisted, do the following: Tag us on your Instagram story┃official-links, Retweet our latest Tweet┃twitter-feed | Invite more people to the Discord server, change your discord name and profile picture┃Boost the server.
A couple of these points are particularly challenging to swallow, particularly the requirement to change your Discord username and profile photo. This isn’t a name just for this server, but your username and picture across any server, so it’s a big commitment if you’re active in other communities and also limits your ability to do this on more than one NFT project at a time, although some solve this with multiple accounts.
The reference to level 5, is a reflection of how much pimping you’ve done and there are various referral codes that are used to correlate new users in the Discord that arrived as a result of your hard work.
Step 5: Get on the whitelist
Once you’ve jumped through the many, many hoops, you can apply for the whitelist. This is typically done in a specific channel named something like ‘verify-whitelist’. In this channel, you’ll see many people posting -verify which is a command that calls a bot to run a verification script on your account and if you meet the criteria, you might get on the list.
You would then need to share a MetaMask wallet address which would be included in the whitelist, used during the minting process where the NFTs are created.
Step 6: Mint your NFT
You should monitor the announcements channel and the social media accounts for the project, to understand when the minting date is scheduled for. Sometimes a very short notification period is provided and some projects are more generous than others in offering time to mint, before they give your slot to someone else.
In the ‘official-links’ channel, you will see a link to a dedicated minting website once the process begins. It’s important not to follow any links from DMs, they are likely scams.
All the effort to this point was to get on the whitelist to have the chance to pay money to mint your NFT. The cost to do this is known as the ‘mint price’ which should be very clear from the start, often somewhere around 0.2 ETH (around A$867).
It may sound strange, but these randomly generated NFT collections don’t get executed at the time of minting. Minting will often create a placeholder, a blank trading card, and only when the reveal date arrives with that card have the final image shown on it and you find out how cool your character is.
Step 7: Wait for reveal
You can start trading the blank NFT on a secondary market like OpenSea from the time of minting. Only after all NFTs in the collection have been minted, will you then get a reveal. This reveal date is an important date, as your NFT becomes far easier for people to decide if they like it and assign a value based on what it looks like (or what it provides if the NFT has additional utility).
Summary
So as you can see the process is not easy, it’s a little dirty in parts, but there is a lot of potential to make money if you can land on the right whitelist, for the right project, that pops in demand and the buyers open their wallets.
Given the diversity in NFT projects, I would strongly recommend to anyone, that they gamble with money they can afford to lose.
