Introduction 1
About This Book 1
Foolish Assumptions 2
Icons Used in This Book 2
Beyond the Book 3
Where to Go from Here 3
Part 1: Getting Started With Nfts 5
Chapter 1: Introducing Non-Fungible Tokens 7
Beginning at the Beginning: What Is a Non-Fungible Good? 9
Exploring Uses for NFTs 10
Finding Out How an NFT Works 11
Buying NFTs 14
Why buy NFTs 15
NFTs as investments 15
Proceeding on Your NFT Journey 16
Chapter 2: Owning Your Own Nft 17
Where It All Began: Non-Fungible Kitties 18
Blockchain for the masses 18
Not just a passing fad 20
The impact of NFTs 20
The game mechanics of CryptoKitties 23
What's In Your Wallet? Setting Up MetaMask 24
Setting Up Coinbase 26
Creating your Coinbase account 27
Verifying your phone number 27
Adding your personal information 28
Verifying your identity and adding your bank account 28
Adding funds to your wallet 29
Collecting, Breeding, and Selling Your Very Own Non-Fungible (Crypto)Kitties 30
Buying your first CryptoKitty 30
Using the Offer function 31
Breeding your kitties 31
Chapter 3: The Future of NFTs 33
Dissecting the Anatomy of a $69 Million NFT 33
Redefining Property Rights (NFTs Are Not Just about Digital Art and Kitties!) 36
NFTs and Digital Property 37
Music, movies, and books 37
Photos and other digital art 38
Game assets 39
NFTs and Real Property 39
Homes, cars, and nondigital pets 40
Art, jewelry, wine, and other collectibles 41
Imagining the Possibilities 41
Part 2: Buying And Selling Nfts 43
Chapter 4: Getting In On The Nft Game 45
Knowing the Ins and Outs of Buying NFTs 46
Examining the success of early NFTs 46
Thinking about NFTs as an investment 47
Understanding the Risks of Hot Wallets like MetaMask 49
Comparing hot wallets 50
Weighing the pros and cons of hot wallets 50
Uncovering Your MetaMask Wallet 52
Installing MetaMask 52
Securing your MetaMask wallet for Chrome and Firefox 55
Buying Ether for Your MetaMask Wallet 55
Exploring NFT Marketplaces 56
Navigating the OpenSea of NFTs 57
The Nifty Gateway 62
Rarible's decentralized governance 64
Chapter 5: Investing In Nfts 69
Understanding NFTs Are Not Cryptocurrency 70
Introducing NFT Investing 71
Deciding Whether NFT Investing Is for You 72
NFT Investing Strategies for Beginners 73
Valuing your NFT 74
Choosing your strategy 76
Discovering the Best-Performing NFTs 77
Exploring Popular NFT Types 79
Table of Contents v
Digital art 79
Collectibles 79
Games 79
Music 80
Popular memes 80
Reporting NFT Gains and Paying Taxes on NFTs 81
Part 3: Developing Your Knowledge:
A Step-By-Step Guide To Programming
Your Own Nft 83
Chapter 6: What Is Ethereum? 85
Revealing the Ethereum Virtual Machine 86
Ether: The Gas That Fuels Your Transactions 88
The journey of a transaction 89
Compensating the (proof-of-) workers: What's in it for the miners? 91
From happy hour to surge pricing: Determining a reasonable gas price 92
Setting your budget: Is the sky the (gas) limit? 94
Transaction fees 96
The Blockchain: Where It's All Stored and Secured 99
Ethash and proof of work: What makes Ethereum tamper-proof? 100
Miners and nonces and bears - oh, my! 102
How many "confirmations" until I'm actually confirmed? 102
Uncles and orphans 104
Hard forks: Updates to the underlying protocol 105
Smart Contracts Make the EVM Go Round 106
The nascent life of a smart contract 107
Exciting possibilities 108
Notable limitations 109
Oracles: How to Connect to the "Outside" World 109
Shining a Light on Ethereum's Fundamental Structure 111
The big picture 111
Nuts-and-bolts of the blockchain 112
Gas essentials 113
Things that make the EVM an interesting place 114
Chapter 7: Creating an Ethereum Account 115
Understanding Externally Owned Accounts 116
What it means to create an account 117
Private versus public keys 118
Digital signatures 121
Discovering Contract Accounts 123
Knowing the Difference Between Public Networks and Private Environments 126
Local development environments 126
Test networks 127
Main network 127
Preparing Your Accounts (on MetaMask) 128
Renaming accounts on MetaMask 129
Adding different ETH to different accounts 131
Funding your testnet account 132
Exploring the Ropsten testnet blockchain 135
"Disappearing" balances 136
Chapter 8: Setting Up a Development Environment 139
Exploring Your Ethereum Solution Stack 140
Elements of the Ethereum stack 140
Here a stack, there a stack: Pre-made stacks 142
Put On Your Hard Hat: Constructing Your Environment 143
Setting up your local blockchain test environment 143
Connecting a custom (Ganache) network to your MetaMask wallet 147
Adding local (Ganache) accounts to your MetaMask wallet 150
Synching the Remix IDE to your MetaMask wallet 158
Chapter 9: Deploying Your First Smart Contract 163
Working with Smart Contract Languages 164
Starting with the Solidity version pragma 165
Going from source code to bytecode 166
Key Elements of a Smart Contract 168
Data 168
Functions 169
Event logs 170
No Need to Reinvent the Wheel: Using Smart Contract Libraries 171
Ready for Takeoff: Launching Your Smart Contract 171
Beginning with a simple template 173
Compiling before takeoff 175
Deploying 176
Chapter 10: Discovering Token Standards 185
Introducing Ethereum Development Standards 185
Ensuring interoperability and composability 186
Learning the ABCs of EIPs and ERCs 186
Understanding Standard Token Interfaces 189
ERC-20 token standard 190
ERC-721 non-fungible token standard 192
Other token standards on Ethereum 194
Chapter 11: Building An ERC-721 Token 197
Writing and Compiling Your NFT 197
The code 198
The play-by-play 201
Deploying Your NFT 205
Deploying on Ganache 205
Deploying on Ropsten 208
Deploying on Mainnet 217
Nurturing Your NFT 219
Following your NFT on the blockchain 220
Interacting with your NFT 222
Part 4: The Part Of Tens 225
Chapter 12: Ten Marketplaces For Your Nfts 227
The OpenSea Marketplace 228
The Axie Infinity Marketplace 229
The CryptoPunks Marketplace 230
The NBA Top Shot Marketplace 231
The Rarible Marketplace 232
SuperRare Marketplace 233
The Alcor NFT Marketplace 234
The Binance NFT Marketplace 235
The Foundation NFT Marketplace 236
The Crypto.com NFT Platform 237
Chapter 13: The Ten Most Expensive Nfts 239
Everydays: The First 5000 Days 240
CryptoPunk #7523 241
CryptoPunk #3100 242
CryptoPunk #7804 243
Crossroad 244
Ocean Front 245
CryptoPunk #5217 246
World Wide Web Source Code 247
Stay Free 248
CryptoPunk #7252 249
Index 251
