How to Mint an NFT With BNB?: An In-Depth Guide

2021 was all about NFTs or non-fungible tokens (NFT). 

While the cryptocurrency market capitalization surpassed $3 trillion last year, NFTs also grew to become a billion-dollar sector.

According to crypto data platform DappRadar, the NFT market generated more than $23 billion in trading volume in 2021 compared to just $100 million in 2020. The data further showed that just 5,000 unique wallets have been engaging with NFTs at the beginning of 2021 and by the end of the year this number jumped over 30x.

It was at the end of last year that NFT was also named “Word of the Year” by the Collins Dictionary.

Provable ownership

As we saw, everyone from global brands, companies to celebrities, and countries joined the NFT trend by either buying digital art or launching their own collections. 

Legacy auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s debuted NFT auctions and accepted cryptocurrency as payment and then brands like Visa, Adidas Originals, Pepsi, and Time Magazine joined and formed partnerships to advance into the NFT space.

The rise of the NFT-based play-to-earn (P2E) game Axie Infinity along with popular Profile Pictures (PFP) NFTs, such as CryptoPunk and Bored Ape Yacht Club, played a vital role in this growth. 

Towards the end of 2021, the metaverse further intensified the NFT trend through digital collectibles and wearables for avatars in virtual environments.

But if you are still wondering what NFTs are, not to worry, as we have you covered. NFTs are digital assets representing the ownership of digital items like art, games, and music. The ownership of these assets is documented on the blockchain in smart contracts. This information makes NFTs unique and allows, for the first time, provable ownership over digital items.

As for what makes NFTs valuable, it is a combination of different factors such as publicly verifiable ownership, popularity, and scarcity.

NFTs also offers several opportunities to make money. Besides selling your NFTs as a creator and trading it like any other investment asset - buy low, sell high, there are several other ways to earn from your NFTs, including royalty payments, renting out your NFTs, play-to-earn games, stake your NFTs, NFT farming, and investing in NFT startups.

BSC Brings Affordability

With NFTs being sold for millions of dollars — digital artist Beeple sold his NFT for $69 million and made headlines — and opening a new economic opportunity, you might be tempted to try your hand at minting some NFTs and be part of its bright and exciting future.   

Currently, Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Solana, Tezos, Flow, NEO, Secret Network, and Tron are the popular blockchains that have introduced tools to support NFTs.

Today, we will cover the leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance’s blockchain network. Binance Smart Chain (BSC) was launched to lower transaction costs and provide a way for smaller users, who have been priced out from using Ethereum blockchain due to its high fees, to take part in the exciting innovations and upside of the crypto, decentralized finance (DeFi), and NFT. 

The proof-of-stake (PoS)-based BSC has been built for running smart contract applications that also implement the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) so that Ethereum-based applications can also run on it.

First unveiled in April 2020 and launched five months after that, it was early in 2021 that the BSC gained immense traction among retail investors. In May 2021, BSC amassed a record $31.7 billion worth of assets.

With ~3 second block times and transactions costing a fraction of a dollar, BSC is one of the more affordable networks that has emerged as an Ethereum competitor. 

BSC uses the token standard BEP-20, bearing the same functions as their Ethereum counterpart ERC20 tokens. As for non-fungible tokens, BSC-based NFTs follow the BEP-721 and BEP-1155 standard compared to Ethereum’s ERC-721 and ERC-1155. 

The Fuel - ‘BNB’

Amidst the growing interest in NFTs, the exchange Binance itself launched an NFT marketplace in mid-2021. The marketplace runs primarily on BSC but is supported by the Ethereum network as well. 

At the time, the company said it aims “to build the largest NFT trading platform in the world by leveraging the fastest, cheapest, and most secure NFT solutions powered by Binance blockchain infrastructure and community.”

Now, coming on to the next important factor to mint NFTs on BSC is BNB, the native utility token of the Binance ecosystem. 

Launched in July 2017, the $90 billion market cap cryptocurrency rallied more than 1,250% in 2021. 

The exchange burns its native BNB tokens on a monthly basis. Initially, the burn was based on the fee schedule and was more recently made automatic and based on BNB price to reflect the supply and demand of BNB as well as the number of blocks generated in a quarter calculated based on on-chain information. This burn will continue until the BNB supply reaches 100 million.

Besides being used to pay for transaction fees on Binance’s centralized and decentralized trading platform, staking, and asset transfers, BNB fuels transactions on BSC. BNB is used on BSC, much like gas on Ethereum.

If you want to acquire some BNB, you can do so on the exchange Binance by using stablecoin like USDT or other crypto assets on the spot market. To do so, you have to first fund your account with USDT by using your credit card or through a peer-to-peer (P2P) purchase.

You also have the option to swap your crypto assets to BNB in the Convert section by simply going to Trade → Convert → Fill in the boxes (the crypto and amount)→ Confirm.

Let’s Mint NFTs

Now that you have an idea of the Binance ecosystem, let's get started with the main task - minting some NFTs. 

Powered by Binance Smart Chain’s infrastructure and community, the Binance NFT marketplace allows creators around the world to mint, sell, bid, and purchase NFTs.

As a creator, it is pretty easy and cheap to mint NFTs on the largest crypto exchange Binance’s NFT marketplace. In a matter of a few minutes, you can have your NFT and start trading it or withdraw it to another exchange or a compatible wallet. 

To get started, you have to create a Binance account. 

Now connect your wallet to Binance and make sure you have enough BNB to pay the fees. The minting fee of each NFT is 0.005 BNB on the Binance Smart Chain. Besides BNB, the Binance NFT marketplace also supports its own stablecoin BUSD and ETH.

When using Binance NFT marketplace, go on its homepage, where you will get the option to mint an NFT or create a new collection. Once there, select the image, audit, video, or any other file that you want to turn into an NFT on the upload page. 

Binance smart chain NFTs support JPEG, PNG, and GIF in the image category while MP4, MPEG, and AVI in the video, and WAV and MP3 in audio.

Now, provide the relevant information required, which is the detailed description of your artwork, to mint NFT. Minting an NFT will make your digital artwork secure and tamper-proof on Binance Smart Chain. 

You can further choose to create either a single NFT (BEP-721) or a series of NFTs (BEP-1155), which will provide you with multiple versions of your collectible, but each of them would still be unique. 

The Royalty section will allow you as a creator to earn a specified percentage of your NFT’s subsequent sale.

Once you have uploaded your file, your NFT will be created, and you can check the minting transaction on BscScan. Before the NFT is minted, you will be prompted to authorize the transaction with your connected wallet as well.

The Collections page is where you will find all the NFTs you own, whether created or bought. All your NFTs are automatically added to the Community Collection by default which means anyone browsing the marketplace is able to view your NFT.

There is also an option to import NFT from an outside wallet or another exchange. You can use TrustWallet and the popular MetaMask Wallet to access the Binance NFT marketplace, you only have to add the Binance Smart Chain Network to your wallet.

Now, you can list your NFT for sale on Binance’s "Featured." 

To sell your NFTs once it has been successfully minted, select the NFT you would like to sell and then simply click sell. You can put your NFT on sale for a specific price too, just select ‘Fixed Price’ as the sale type and enter the price in BNB that you want to sell the NFT for.

Another option available to you is an auction where you have to provide the minimum BNB bidding price and duration of the auction. 

Once you have chosen the sell mode, click ‘List NFT for Sale’ and sign the transaction with your BNB supporting wallet. Once it is confirmed, your listing will get active and be open for others to start bidding or buying.

NFT Projects on BSC

Minting non-fungible tokens on the Binance NFT marketplace is a very straightforward and cheap way to start your NFT journey. However, this is not your only option, as there are several NFT projects on BSC that you can try using BNB.

With $170.8 million in TVL, Mobox is a popular project that combines DeFi, gaming, and NFTs. The project uses liquidity pools (LPs), yield farming, and NFTs to help users find the best yield strategies and generate unique NFTs that can be used across a multitude of games. 

Game Dapp Mobox stands out due to having DeFi features in its game mechanics and combining NFTs as playable characters. Unlike other GameFi projects on BSC, Mobox has managed to retain its user base and is the fifth most played game in the industry with an average of 24,000 daily UAW. 

BSC actually ruled 2021 with its sold GameFi offerings. In the second half of the year, with projects like CryptoBlades which became the most played game based on Unique Active Wallets (UAW) in August 2021, BSC became a popular alternative.

Based on total value locked (TVL), BabySwap is currently the biggest NFT project on BSC with about $285 million in assets, according to BscProject.org. BabySwap is an automated market-making (AMM) plus an NFT decentralized exchange for projects on BSC.

BinaryX is in 2nd place, whose team is building a play-to-earn (P2E) metaverse game called CyberDragon that combines the elements of NFTs, gaming, and DeFi within its gameplay, auction, and marketplace.

BakerySwap is another project, which is an NFT trading platform - 'Bakery NFT Supermarket' - as well as an AMM protocol with over $55.2 million in TVL. Its native governance token BAKE can be used to compose a random combo meal, which is an NFT and a farming tool. BAKE holders can stake their NFT combo to earn BAKE tokens.

My DeFi Pet is currently leading BSC’s NFT sector. My DeFi Pet is a virtual pet raising game that brings gaming and DeFi together. Based on the Play-to-Earn (P2E) model, it also supports KardiaChain. The project recorded a 270% increase in its 7-day average addresses at 4.82k and a 420% spike in transactions at 37k.

DeHero, Alchemy Toys, NFTBox, ArenaSwap, Bunny Park, X World Games are other NFT projects. There are in total about 200 NFT projects on Binance Smart Chain that are currently working with NFTs.

Final Word

As the number of digital creators across the world grows at a rapid pace, the importance of NFTs will only continue to rise, making digital art a lucrative option. 

Here, Binance Smart Chain NFT marketplace can play a big part given that it is backed by the largest crypto exchange in the world with millions of users that lets its users easily tokenize their artworks and have them live and ready for sale in mere minutes.

NFTs on BSC are getting increasingly popular thanks to the blockchains' low fees and faster transactions offering smaller users a good place to get started.

As for NFTs, they are revolutionizing digital asset ownership, and in 2021, they broke out of their niche. Now backed by such a strong year, NFTs are expected to only grow further and continue to gain mainstream adoption in coming years.