Two years ago I wrote my first guide to collecting NFTs on Tezos. A lot has happened since then, and the Temple x FxHash Web3Writers contest felt like the perfect time to reiterate on this topic, and compile a new guide to getting started on Tezos. Since I've written that previous article, I must've collected and created a couple hundreds of NFTs, all of them on the Tezos blockchain.

Here's a little appetizer of some of the art that you can expect to find on Tezos - some of the things that I've collected in recent weeks:

This post is going to be split into two larger sections: a primer on things you need to know about Tezos, how blockchains work in general, as well as some information what these non-fungible tokens are; followed by a second part that provides instructions on installing the Temple wallet (my personal favorite), how to use it for various transactions on the blockchain - specifically for collecting NFTs. And we'll conclude by collecting our first NFT!

Here's a quick index:

Tezos, Blockchains and NFT primer:

1. What is Tezos?
2. How do blockchains work?
3. How is Tezos different from other blockchains?
4. Why should you collect on Tezos?

Getting started with Temple:

1. Interacting with the blockchain
2. Installing Temple
3. Syncing, Collecting and Minting with Temple
4. The different Marketplaces

What is Tezos?

If you're looking to take your first steps into the world of Web3, then Tezos is in my humble opinion the absolutely best entry point. Let's begin by setting the scene - what does the term Tezos actually encompass?

Here I could refer you to the official Tezos website... but before your head starts spinning from the barrage of technical jargon over there, I'd much rather just describe what Tezos is in very friendly and descriptive terms:

• Tezos is a blockchain, a decentralized network and a digital currency.
• Tezos describes itself as an open-source platform for independent developers and enterprises alike, to create Web3 apps, also known as dapps (decentralized applications). Essentially, it is a big playground for interesting new and decentralized technologies.
• Tezos is an alternative financial system that ensures secure end-to-end transactions without requiring a bank as a middle-man. It also provides means to store digital currency and assets.
• Tezos consists of a community of builders, creatives, art enthusiasts and especially artists. Contemporarily, it has become known as THE art blockchain. If you make art of any form you probably want to be part of this community.
• Tezos is the home of some of the largest NFT marketplaces on the internet. FxHash for instance, is the largest generative art marketplace that exists across any of the different blockchains.

This paints a broad picture of all of the different things that you can expect happening on Tezos, a more in depth, slightly technical introduction to Tezos can be found here.

How do Blockchains work?

I've already thrown around the term Web3 a number of times, but what does it actually mean?

Web3 is the next generation of the internet, centered around the ideas of decentralization and blockchain technology. In Web3 users own their data in the literal sense of the word, and can interact with peers without having to go through a middleman. These concepts come to life through the underlying blockchain technology.

You might be familiar with the Bitcoin blockchain, as it is the oldest and most famous one; but it's actually just one out of many different blockchains. They come in many different shapes and flavors, depending on how these systems are designed, implemented, and what they try to achieve. For instance, there's Tezos and Ethereum, which we'll talk about extensively today. There's multiple ways in which we can look at blockchains:

• A blockchain is a protocol: a set of rules and standards that define how a network of computers communicate and interact with each other.
• A blockchain is a special type of register that stores information in a specific sequential manner. Hence the name chain - it is essentially a record of interactions, where these interactions are represented as blocks of information. After undergoing a validation process, each individual block gets appended to this digital ledger, making it a permanent part of the chain.
• A blockchain is decentralised. This digital ledger is secure by virtue of how it is implemented: firstly, each block contains a reference to the previous block that it is appended to, and secondly, multiple copies of the entire ledger are stored and maintained by participants in the network. This makes it quite impossible to tamper or modify the digital record.
• Blockchains are also alternative financial systems. They essentially provide means to store digital currencies and effectuate financial transactions in a secure manner - without requiring a bank as a middle man.

At their core, blockchains let you agree about data with strangers on the internet. Public blockchains provide a place to put information that anyone can add to, that no one can change, and that isn’t controlled by any single person or entity.

Blockchain, explained by Mitchell Clark ~ The Verge

Arguably the best introduction on how a blockchain works is by Grant Sanderson aka 3blue1brown:

Even though the video talks specifically about Bitcoin, it provides a good idea of the core components of blockchain technology. Tezos is quite a bit different in some of these regards. Additionally, it isn't necessary to understand the technical aspects to actually get started, but at the same time it doesn't hurt to have an understanding of what it is that you're doing when you start using your crypto wallet. I'm also a bit of a nerd, hence this new technology is really exciting to me.

What is an NFT?

The term NFT stands for Non Fungible Token. On the internet, NFTs are largely associated with digital collectibles. These come in various shapes and forms, such as images, videos, GIFs, and in recent years, even interactive code that renders some graphics into the browser. Basically, anything that can be displayed by a web browser, can also be an NFT.

The term non-fungible indicates that these digital assets are unique, as opposed to cryptocurrencies that are fungible - 2 different bitcoins are interchangeable, 2 NFTs are not. This can get a bit confusing very quickly, so we'll leave it at that for now.

What's important to note here, is that an NFT isn't actually the artwork itself but rather a proof of ownership of a unique digital asset. This means that when you collect an NFT you can later on sell it again or transfer it to someone else if you'd like to gift it to them. Just like trading cards in real life. The lines here also get blurry, because sometimes the NFT can actually be the artwork if it is stored on-chain - but that's also a story for another day.

NFTs today are unique, cryptographic units for record-keeping and accounting for virtual and/or material objects. An NFT can be thought of as a claim on ownership of an asset or access to a service.

What are NFTs Anyway? by Wassim Alsindi ~ Right Click Save

How is Tezos different from other blockchains?

And why should you collect stuff on Tezos?

As a blockchain, Tezos is quite unique in how it functions. Without losing ourselves in the technical details, here's some of the key differences in comparison to other blockchains:

• Tezos is Eco-friendly - the Tezos blockchain evolves and creates new blocks based on a consensus mechanism, rather than a proof of work mechanism that requires computational power to solve cryptographic puzzles.
• In the past two years Tezos has swung itself upon the throne as the leading art blockchain. And when I say art, I mean really. good. ART! I can confidently say that you will not be able to find better blockchain art than on Tezos, in quantity and in quality.
• What's more, as opposed to other blockchains where gas fees might cost you an arm and a leg, on Tezos these costs are quite negligible . It generally costs a couple of micro-cents to complete any given transaction. Besides that, Tezos is also lightning fast, is constantly being improved and as mentioned earlier is also eco friendly due to it's proof of stake mechanism that doesn't require expense of computational power to create new blocks.
• You'll also find yourself as a part of a vibrant and friendly NFT community that puts art at the forefront, keeps things real, speaks out when things aren't alright, and overall isn't brought down by toxic positivity and a WAGMI mentality.
• It is also home to the largest generative art NFT marketplace that currently exists: FxHash.
• Besides this there's also a continuous stream of independent platforms popping up that are either specialized for particular types of NFTs, or try to put a different spin on the entire collecting narrative.

If you're still not convinced check out this article by Lauren McDonagh-Pereira about why artists love Tezos:

Diversity is one of the best parts about the Tezos art world. Artists from all over the world are able to have a seat at the table. Established artists and student artists can afford to mint work -

Why Do Artists Love Tezos?

Interacting with the blockchain

I believe that we've laid enough groundwork and are ready to interact with the Tezos blockchain now. The main thing that I see people struggling with, is how to actually get started - where and what is the entry point? Where do you actually sign up?

Thing is, blockchains aren't websites where you sign up with an email address; we'll have to let go of web2 notions and much rather think in terms of addresses 👇

What is a Wallet?

A wallet is essentially a software application, that you install on your device as you would install any other software. In many cases, crypto wallets come as browser extensions, such that you can easily use it while browsing particular Web3 portals.

This wallet software allows you to do a number of things, such as manage your crypto addresses (we'll get to that in a second), your private keys, receive and transfer currencies, as well as manage collected tokens, and generally lets you interact and effectuate transactions on various dapps.

What is a blockchain address?

Addresses often get confused with wallets. A wallet is a tool to manage addresses. Most wallets will usually allow you to create a virtually endless number of addresses. An address is not a block on the blockchain either, although it is tied to the transactions that are done via this address, an address is just your unique identifier on the blockchain with which you effectuate transactions.

These addresses are usually long alphanumeric strings, for instance my personal tezos address is: tz1hXx6tvTV3kzxpBR6E4hDYcxdgcRGHUTFjtz1hXx6tvTV3kzxpBR6E4hDYcxdgcRGHUTFj

Technically you can now see how many crypto buckeroonies I currently have as well as the transactions that I've performed since this address has been created. This is another aspect of the blockchain that's important to note, all transactions are public. To everyone.

Technically the only thing that you can do now with my address, is send me Tezos and other tokens; you can't however use my address to make transactions - you would need the private key associated with that address as well.

Hopefully this clarifies the difference between a wallet and an address - now we can actually set up our own wallet.

Installing Temple

Depending on what browser you use most frequently, you'll probably want to install it on there. I already have Temple on Chrome and Firefox which I use most often, hence for this demonstration I'll install it on Brave which I've grown to like quite a bit recently.

Since Brave is also chromium based (it uses the same tech as chrome under the hood), it'll also take you to the chrome web store where you'll simply click on Add to Brave:

A new tab should open up and you'll be greeted by the following screen:

Now when you check your extensions list you should also see Temple show up there, you can go ahead and pin it so that you can quickly access it in the future:

Since you find yourself here I assume that you don't have a wallet yet, so we'll go ahead and click Create a new Wallet, which takes us to a new view that will ask us to create a new seed phrase:

This seed phrase is basically the master key that gives you access to your wallet in the future. As indicated in the screenshot, this seed phrase should be stored somewhere safe, ideally somewhere offline, and not be shared with anyone else. If for any reason your device breaks, and you want to import your wallet on a new device, then you will require this seed phrase.

Seed phrases are usually made out of 12 random words - in the next screen you'll be asked to verify that you've made a backup by filling in the blanks:

Once you've done that you'll be asked to set up a password. You're not actually going to use the seed phrase to log into your wallet each and every time you want to use it, but rather you'll be using a regular password just like for other things on the internet:

Next it'll take you through a number of onboarding steps - read those carefully! And we're already good to go actually!

Collecting NFTs with Temple

To collect an NFT on Tezos:

1. Install a wallet - the hardest part and we've already completed it
2. Get some tez in your wallet
3. Syncing with the marketplace
4. Collecting and signing the transaction

We'll go over each one of these steps in more detail in the following sections!

Getting Tez in your Wallet

There's multiple ways to get some tez in your wallet. The most convenient method is probably by directly purchasing some tez through the Temple wallet. Simply click the buy button in the wallet and it'll offer a couple of methods to do so, either by exchanging a different currency or directly via debit/credit card.

Alternatively you can also purchase tez via an cryptocurrency exchange platform like Kraken (the one I personally use) and then send it to your wallet address from there. However it might take some time to get your account verified on one these exchange platforms.

Thirdly there's also the option of hustling for your tez by selling your own NFTs, which is what I did initially. You'll need someone to send you a buck or two to cover transaction costs to mint your token, and voila, once someone collects your art you'll have some tez to spend on other people's artworks.

Syncing to the Marketplace

Let's assume you want to purchase an NFT on Fxhash, to do so, we'll first have to sync our wallet to the marketplace address. Syncing our wallet means that we are connecting it to make use of it's convenient dapp interface - it's kind of like logging into a website.

Minting an Edition/Iteration

Synced and loaded with tez we can go shopping. If you've found an artwork that you enjoy, and you've verified that it is an original piece by the indicated author (by checking their socials), then it's time to hit that collect button.

For instance, if a particular artwork on FxHash caught your eye, you'll simply head to that artworks page and check if it still has remaining editions, if you're in luck and it does then you can simply collect it - Temple should spawn a new request for you to confirm in that case:

Checking your Collection

Most marketplaces also provide a tab where you can check out your collection:

There's quite a few different marketplaces at this point on Tezos, each one a little bit different from the others. Objkt.com for instance lets you see all tokens that you've collected across all of the other major platforms - in a way it's the opensea of Tezos.

Concluding Thoughts

That's it from me for now - I hope this article helped you get started with your Tezos Journey, gave you some insights into how blockchains function and provided some guidance on installing and using Temple to collect NFTs.

I also recommend checking out the other Web3Writers articles (via the hashtag #Web3Writers on Twitter) if you want to learn more - all of which I saw so far are really interesting! Otherwise I'd also like to thank FxHash and Temple for the awesome opportunity, and motivating some cool writing in the space!

Cheers and happy collecting ~ Gorilla Sun 🌸