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Launching an NFT collection has quickly become a very profitable business. With collections raking in anywhere from $100,000 right up to $100 million it can be a great way to launch a startup, sell your artwork or simply make some money while having fun.
The costs of launching an NFT collection vary depending which chain you decide to launch on, the two most popular networks for NFTs are Solana and Ethereum. Ethereum holds the most trading volume however Solana is quickly catching up due to its low fees and fast transaction times. Today we will cover the pros, cons and costs of launching on both Solana and Ethereum.
Solana
Solana is a layer 1 network focusing on low gas fees and scalability. It currently boasts transaction speeds of 50,000 transactions per second. This makes it a perfect network to create and sell NFTs on.
Creating an NFT on Solana costs approximately $0.10 per NFT. This cost is the fee you pay to upload the NFT artwork and “rent” the space. For a collection of 4,000 NFTs this would cost you approximately $400.
Solana is quickly becoming the number 1 network for NFTs and it is often seeing more trading volume and number of transactions than the current kingpin Ethereum. In fact Solana is quickly becoming known for NFTs and the die hard community, this is apparent on Crypto and NFT Twitter.
How much does it cost to create an NFT on Solana?
This is quite a loaded question with a lot of variables mainly dependent on the size of the collection. The average collection size on Solana is 4,000 NFTs however there are still a lot of 10,000+ collections.
Solana NFTs are launched through a protocol called Candy Machine, built by metaplex. They have lots of really in-depth documentation about how to build a Candy Machine. Building a CM does require quite a bit of coding knowledge however there are a lot of follow along tutorials on Youtube.
Launchpads
Launchpads have become increasingly popular amongst Solana NFTs and offer an easy way for people to launch their NFT collection without having to code a Candy Machine themselves. There are countless launchpads on Solana all offering a range of different pricing offers. Launchpads generally charge anywhere from 2% right up to 10% of the mint proceeds and will sometimes also take a % of the collections royalties.
Fellowship is an NFT collection that has also built a launchpad which they offer as a service. Fellowship has launched a dozen plus successful projects and is a great choice of launchpad to go for as they charge a low fee and have a large community of developers which you can work with post mint.
Magic Eden is the biggest Solana NFT marketplace which also offers a launchpad. With a hold on such a large amount of the NFT traffic this can be a great launchpad to go with as they will advertise your collection on the homepage of the marketplace.
Magic Eden does require you and your team to doxx themselves and also has quite a strict criteria to get accepted.
Solport is another launchpad that is built by an NFT project. One of the most revered launchpads in Solana and also one of the hardest to get accepted one. They boast an un bootable launchpad and one of the smoothest minting experiences in the space. Doxxing is required.
Ethereum
Ethereum is the second biggest Cryptocurrency by market cap and is a layer one similar to Solana that boasts an impressive amount of protocols and dApps. Ethereum smart contracts are ERC-20.
Creating an NFT on Ethereum is a lot more costly than Solana. With Ethereum gas fees varying so much and having skyrocketed lately this is a hard one to answer. So put it into perspective when Crypto punks deployed their ERC-20 smart contract it cost them approximately $7.56 however if they were to deploy that same contract now it would cost approximately $1,000.
There is a lot to take into consideration when deploying on Ethereum, this article covers it very well and in good depth I highly recommend reading it if you plan to deploy on Ethereum.
With gas fees varying so much this often scares people off launching on Ethereum as it can be very intimidating. Ethereum does have its pros such as the huge size of the market.
Ethereum has done $21 million in NFT transaction volume in the last 24 hours, this is double that of Solana. This shows that there is a lot more money in Ethereum NFTs and a broader market for you to sell to.
Ethereum Launchpads
Ethereum also has launchpads targeted at launching NFTs. Due to the size of the market there are dozens upon dozens so I highly recommend getting on Google and starting to dig to find one that works for you. Watch out for scams.
Conclusion
To wrap things up we can see that Solana has a much cheaper and more straightforward system to launch an NFT collection while Ethereum has the broader market to sell to.
There are pros and cons for both and very much depends on your project’s specific needs. An NFT collection of 4,000 on Solana can cost upwards of $1,000 to launch while an NFT collection of 4,000 on Ethereum can cost anywhere from $1,000 right up to $10,000 depending on gas fees.
Smart contracts are a lot easier to understand on Solana and you can even learn how to modify an NFT contract by watching Youtube videos with very little experience. ERC-20 contracts are a lot more difficult and if you do not have any coding experience then you will have to hire a developer which can get costly.
Launchpads are a great way to launch and NFT if you do not have the technical skill set to launch it yourself. Depending on the launchpad you decide to go with they may even help with the marketing.
