Setting up a wallet

Step one in creating crypto art is having a wallet address that identifies you and which will be used in “minting” (the term used for creating a new NFT - “Non-Fungible Token”) your art.

Choosing which wallet to go with is a) a matter of personal choice; b) depends on a lot of different factors like the device you’ll be using and even where in the world you live! (Support for some wallets is geography dependent.)

The first question to answer is: Are you going to create using your mobile or desktop (or both)? Second question is: Which OS are you using on that device? Third question is: Which country are you in? All of these questions will help determine which wallet is the right choice for you.

You’ll also be introduced to the terms: Web3 and dApp in these docs. These are terms used to define decentralized sites/applications; those that interact with the blockchain.

Have a look throught the following guides provided for each wallet and see which one you want to go with:

• MetaMask for desktop browsers & How it works
• Trust Wallet
• Fortmatic - particularly if you already have this via a Cent account

This is the point where most people give up and walk away. One Medium article I read stated:

over 90% of users who try to use a dApp will give up when told they need to download Metamask.

So, getting over this hurdle puts you ahead of 90% of the other people!

To keep things simple later, we’re going to use MetaMask for desktop in all of our examples. It is the most widely used wallet and will work with the widest variety of different Web3 sites.

Note: We’ve had good experience with the MetaMask Mobile App for Android. However, this app is still in the early access phase, and therefore isn’t yet supported by Mintbase on Mobile.

(Also Note: Please, please, please be sure to save your seed phrase, whatever wallet you choose to use! Keep it somewhere safe and secure(and preferably not just on your device) in case you ever need to set your wallet up on another device. Without this seed phrase you will not be able to recover any of the contents of your wallet. If someone else has this seed phrase, they have complete access to the contents of your wallet. Remember: safe & secure!)

Once you have your wallet installed, you need some funds in it to be able to make any transactions. You don’t need a lot, just enough to cover the network fees (called ‘gas’ on the Ethereum network) for the contract and the token. A few dollars should be more than enough. So, once you’ve completed the steps above, continue to 2.2 Funding a wallet