Foundation is the place to display your creativity and communicate your artistic identity to the web3 community. We’ve cultivated an experience that attracts collectors across a broad spectrum of NFT creations. Collections are a great way to group your NFTs and create a themed viewing experience for your collectors.
Collections on Foundation are creator-owned smart contracts that contain your NFTs. As a creator, you have complete ownership and control of the NFTs minted to your smart contract.
Anyone on Foundation can create a Collection and mint an NFT — you’ll just need to connect your wallet before getting started.
The NFTs in a Collection will always be kept together. You can mint as many NFTs as you like to a Collection as well. When you’re ready to create a Collection on Foundation, head to the Create page.
Creating a Collection
The Create modal is your hub for creating new Collections. It provides a step-by-step guide through all of the requirements of deploying your smart contract.
To get there, click Create in the upper right-hand corner of any page, then click Collections in the sidebar.
There are three important components to deploying your Collection’s smart contract:
- Collection name: The title and top-level identity of your Collection and its NFTs.
- Collection symbol: A shorthand symbol that acts as a token name on the blockchain for this Collection’s NFTs.
- Chain: The network that your contract will be created on.
Take care when deciding on your Collection’s name, symbol, and chain. These details are recorded on the blockchain and will represent your work in web3. Double-check that they’re correct and free of errors — you cannot change these details later.
Deploying your smart contract
When your smart contract is deployed, a unique on-chain record is created that contains any NFTs minted to that Collection. Since you’re deploying the contract yourself, you own the contract and will always be in control of it.
You’ll create your contract in one step. Click Deploy your smart contract, sign the transaction in your wallet, and pay the required gas fee. Gas fees are the cost of interacting with the Ethereum blockchain. Gas fees are not set or collected by Foundation.
You’ve just deployed your very own smart contract!
Customizing your Collection page
Now that your contract is deployed, you can navigate to the Collection page and begin customizing it. Make your Collection stand out by adding a unique logo, header image, and description. These details can be edited at any time.
To get started, navigate to the Collection page and click Edit Collection.
Recommended specs for your collection logo, description, and header image:
- 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 characters or less
Minting an NFT
Now you’re ready to mint an NFT to your Collection.
To add an NFT, navigate to the Collection page and click + Mint NFT. You’ll land on the asset upload page, where you’ll upload your NFT file.
Or you can go to the Create modal and start from there.
Uploading your NFT assets
Now you’re ready to upload your NFT asset. We currently support PLAIN, JPG, JPEG, PNG, GIF, SVG, GLTF, GLB, MP4, and MOV file types, up to 300 MB. (For GIFs, we support up to 50 MB.) We strongly recommend reviewing our technical specs for minting an NFT before moving forward with this step.
NFT assets uploaded to Foundation are hosted on IPFS (InterPlanetary File System), a peer-to-peer system that stores data in a distributed way.
With your NFT asset in place, it’s time to add your NFT’s title and description.
Include as much context as possible when writing your description to give the community a sense of your work. Your NFT’s title must be less than 50 characters, but the description can be up to 1,000. If you’d like to add links to your description, you can use Markdown syntax to embed them.
Once everything is set, make sure it’s correct before minting. These details will be recorded on the blockchain and cannot be changed later. If you make a mistake, you’ll need to burn the NFT and start the mint process again.
Minting your NFT
Now you’re ready to review your NFT and mint it to the blockchain.
- Review your NFT’s assets and other details — these cannot be changed after minting.
- Click Mint NFT and sign the transaction in your wallet.
- Wait for your NFT to be minted. You can navigate away while this completes.
- When minting is complete, the minting transaction has settled on the blockchain and your NFT is now minted.
With your NFT now minted, you can navigate to your NFT page on Foundation.
Creating a Split NFT
Splits allow you to share NFT earnings with up to four recipients or collaborators. With this feature, you can set a share percentage for each participant, which determines how much each individual will earn on primary and secondary sales.
Follow these steps to create a Split:
- After uploading your NFT asset in the minting process, toggle Create a split and click Continue.
- Enter the wallet addresses for the Split recipients.
- Set each recipient’s share percentage so the total equals 100%.
- Click Mint NFT and confirm the transaction in your wallet.
Much like a standard NFT, a Split cannot be changed once it’s been minted. It is permanently recorded on the blockchain, and any desired changes require burning the Split NFT and minting it again.
Now that you’ve successfully minted an NFT, you can repeat these steps to complete your Collection, or you can go right into listing your new NFT on the Foundation marketplace .
We hope this guide helps you create your desired artist presence on Foundation. If you have any questions at all, don’t hesitate to reach out to us and we’ll be happy to help.