How to buy an NFT?

Choosing a marketplace

There are many marketplaces where you can buy NFTS, we wrote about some of them earlier in this article, but the most popular marketplace is OpenSea.

OpenSea is like Amazon and eBay at the same time, here you can both sell and buy NFTs. Most ETH-based projects can be bought and sold here. Signing up is quite easy, simply by connecting your MetaMask wallet, which will later be used to log into your account. Your MetaMask wallet will serve as an account login on most NFT marketplaces.

1. Go to https://opensea.io/. Click the person icon and select “Profile”.

Wallet connection

2. It will ask you to connect your wallet. Select MetaMask.

3. The MetaMask window will pop up asking you to select the wallet address you want to connect. Check the address you want to connect and click “Next”.

4. Next, you can see the permissions it’s requesting: “View the addresses of your permitted accounts” - you need to allow the Opensea website to access information about the wallet (this allows the site to see the address and how much money it has).

5. Congrats! You now have an OpenSea account. Now it needs to be filled. Click on the gear on the right.

Filling out an OpenSea account

6. Fill out the profile with a pre-prepared description and user name. Add links to social networks and connect an e-mail address (e-mail will need to be confirmed in order to receive bid notifications). Also, set a Profile Image and a Profile Banner (they are loaded when you click on the circle and square).

Any NFT you buy on the Ethereum network, even if you buy on another site will show up here because Opensea is reading your public address and displaying all NFTs. 

Go to shopping

It's time for shopping!

1. Browse OpenSea and search for the NFT you wish to purchase. 

2. When you have chosen an NFT that you like, go to the page of this NFT. There’s a little info about the NFT collection, the number of items, the number of owners, and the “floor price”.

3. Click on your desired NFT. Click on the one you are interested in, out of all the available NFTs. 

4. Click on Buy Now.

On the subsequent page, click on “Buy Now” to purchase your NFT.

5. Review Total and click on Checkout

Follow the prompts to finish purchasing your NFT. Similar to the minting process, you will have to review the gas fee and confirm the transaction in your MetaMask wallet to complete your purchase.

Once the transaction is processes, the NFT will show up in your OpenSea account (and show as complete in MetaMask).

There you go! You have just purchased your first NFT. Congratulations!

A few words about Gas

Gas fees are the payments individuals make to complete a transaction on a blockchain. These fees are used to compensate blockchain miners for the computing power they have to use to verify blockchain transactions. They are typically paid in the blockchain’s native cryptocurrency.

The amount of gas varies wildly depending on network usage and can reach absolutely obscene values during hotly contested NFT drops.