Collections are smart contracts that creators deploy themselves. This means creators are empowered to create their own smart contracts and mint NFTs directly to those contracts, instead of minting works to a shared contract. Creating Collections this way ensures that your work is fully and entirely yours.
We’ve put together a checklist to make sure you have everything lined up before creating and deploying your Foundation Collection smart contract .
Let’s review the different parts that make up a Collection.
Name and symbol
Your Collection’s name and symbol are how your smart contract is represented on Foundation and on the blockchain. Both values surface in search results on Foundation when anyone searches for your work.
The name is essentially the title and top-level identity of your Collection — this is likely the first thing people will see when navigating to your Collection page.
The symbol is a shorthand representation of your Collection that acts as the token identity on the blockchain for any NFTs minted to this contract. Choose a symbol that’s relevant to your Collection’s title and overall identity.
It’s important to note that creating your smart contract with your Collection name and symbol permanently records these details on the blockchain — they cannot be changed once your Foundation Collection has been created. If you’ve made an error or want to make a change, you’ll need to destroy the Collection and start again, which will incur gas fees. Gas fees are the cost of interacting with the blockchain and are not set or collected by Foundation.
Collection page
The Collection page on Foundation is the hub of your NFTs. Here, you can add your own branding with a cover image and logo to help your Collection stand out.
When designing your Collection cover image and logo, keep the following specs in mind:
- Collection logo: 1920 × 1920 px (JPG, PNG, or GIF — max 10MB)
- Cover image: 2800 × 2000 px (JPG, PNG, or GIF — max 10MB)
- Collection description: 500 words or less
You can update these aspects of your Collection page at any time to keep things relevant as you add more NFTs in the future.
Collection NFTs
Your NFTs live inside your Collection smart contract. Make sure your NFTs’ titles, descriptions, and assets align with the theme and overall message of your Collection. We also recommend reviewing our technical specifications for minting NFTs on Foundation to help optimize your assets.
When deciding the order in which NFTs appear on your Collection page, note that NFTs appear from newest to oldest during minting. After minting, the default Collection page view is set to Most Active, which highlights NFTs with higher activity first.
Viewers can also switch between the following sorting options:
- Most Active
- Price: Lowest
- Price: Highest
- Newest
- Oldest
During the minting flow, it’s critical to double-check that your NFTs’ titles and descriptions are accurate and complete. Once an NFT is minted on the blockchain, it cannot be changed.
If you need to make changes, you’ll need to burn the NFT and mint it again, which will incur gas fees. Gas fees are the cost of interacting with the blockchain and are not set or collected by Foundation.
Once you’ve reviewed these Collection details, you’re ready to begin creating and deploying your own Collection smart contract on Foundation. Head over to our guide to creating a Collection and minting NFTs for a step-by-step walkthrough.
Let us know if you have any feedback or questions while putting your Foundation Collection together. You can reach out to us at any time.