20th September 2022 is the first-ever International NFT Day and to document this day I put out a free-mint project called Happy NFT Day

Here’s the #BehindTheStory 👇

On 19th Sept, I saw posts regarding tomorrow being International NFT day.In the evening out of nowhere, it clicked "Oh shit, this will be the first-ever international NFT day"

I want to document that we were here on this day.

A couple of weeks ago I started @100NFTsxyz and I asked myself, "I have the letters NFTs on my domain name itself If I won't document this day then who will?Plus this will become the 2nd project of my 100NFTs project"

So I asked a few friends of mine what they think about this...

To my surprise, DapperLabs (Pioneers of the NFT world) is asking for an email 👀

Something didn't feel right. Collecting data 🙏Isn't it what Web3 is trying to break?

I wanted to give this idea a shot. I had less than a day. I felt different energy. I felt alive.

Within minutes after posting on the group, a mutual friend DMed me 👇

The opportunity to make 1.5ETH (about $2000) in a single day was exciting. But I didn't want to make this a paid thing. I wanted to document the day and nothing else.

I got to work. I made a list of things I need.

• Artwork

• Domain name

• Developer (Contract & Website)

• Some ETH

• and a few general questions

Finding a developer who can get this done within a 12hours timeframe was probably the hardest. I had to put out a tweet and text a few friends.

S/O to @metastartHQ they were one of the few who actually stepped up and said let's do it. I always loved their energy and hunger to get things done.

But I wanted to meet the developer and get things done. I wanted to see the process behind this

Then this guy replied.

We chatted a bit and we figured it out. I went to his place at around 10.30-11 because I wanted to hands-on learn how things happen in the backend.

After I went to his place. I understood how heavy it was and my reaction was "Bro I think I need a nap."

I had a heavy CrossFit in the morning and my body needed sleep. I took a 20mins nap and we got to work.

It's 12.30 AM now. We figured out a few things and we realised that this could be pulled off within the next 12 hours. I went back to my place. Bit excited.

Also, I was super hungry. I got my man Ranjit to make a loaded paneer sandwich

I reached home and brainstormed on a few things (Artwork, mint size, website design, etc) Eventually My body gave up. I needed more sleep and I went to bed at 2.

The next day I woke up at 7 AM, skipped the gym, had breakfast, and got to work.

Top priority: ARTWORK. Without art, we can't do anything.

Biggest question: Should I just do one art or do templates and create generative art? One would make my life easy, but where the thrill in it 🚀

I jotted down a few ideas but then went to the basics.

***"Why did NFTs do well in the first place?"***Because of the vibes. Because it was different from everyone else.

Lord Pepe has to be there.

Quick fun fact: A friend of mine gave me this sticker and I said I need that on an NFT.I went on the internet, found it and added it to my Figma.

Now a few quick questions to answer:

• How many assets and layers are needed?

• How will I generate 2k of them?

I started exploring the internet. The math is not that hard but at that moment of heat, I was unable to figure it out. (Time was our enemy and as the day passed my processing power was deteriorating)

I finally found one Figma plugin where I don't have to pay anything and generate art.
Problem: Only 100 credits and pay $59 for more. I'm losing money on this project. I didn't want to spend more.

I quickly watched this video and got my layers right

I decided to go with 30 different pictures. I downloaded a few world-wonders from Unsplash and here's the result 👇

Side story behind the inspiration on how I ended up creating this art.

Ever wondered why the Mexican hat and the moustache??

I had come across this meme and found it really funny. Lil Baby going Mexican was legit

---

Now that we have the artwork ready, I had three priorities in mind:

• Video + GIF

• Website Design

• Launch Plan

While I worked on these, @NodeInProgress (Developer) was working on the ERC 721A contract.

I started with the video.

1. Opened my FCP

2. Added all the images.

3. Grouped them into one

4. Make it fast

5. Add music

6. Export

The video looked something like this 👇

Exported another video without audio and made it into a GIF This one is for the website.

it's 3.45PM. Goal 6PM

Conversation between me and Dheeraj:

P: Do we need 2000 JPEGs?
D: No, we'll code it off with 30
P: Cool
D: There is one thing though
P: What's up?
D: ERC721A code got some bugs. I'm working on them.
P: okay, sure. let me know if you need any help.

The conversation sounded a bit low. I got into overthinking.

Got very close to giving up.

But then I said, let's just push it out. We'll take the hits. Then we dropped the idea of ERC721A and went to ERC721 Here's the difference in gas saved by @AzukiOfficial when they first implemented ERC721A (Batch minting)

We started testing the contract now. For Dheeraj it worked and wanted me to give it a shot.

First of all, I've never done this before. I've always been on the other side of this transaction. I’ve always bought NFTs, never done the back end of it.

This part was extremely fulfilling because this exactly what 100NFTs.xyz is created for… to learn everything about NFTs.

Anyway, he sent me a link, I connected to RinkerBy testnet and it kept showing me I don't have enough ETH.

So he sent me to google faucet and added the wallet address.

https://rinkebyfaucet.com You can get some too.

The transaction went through. The contract doesn't have any bugs in them.

While he figured the testnets, I worked on making the socials for @100NFTsxyz

I made a google account and then made a Twitter account. Added the profile picture and my fav JPEG as the cover

After testnet, we started working on the website.

I made a quick gradient background and he had a website that he had worked on.

It was some NFT project he was working on. He called it a "Shit NFT project."

The connect wallet button was already added.

I sent him a quick design because we were already super late.

From India's time perspective, we only had 4 hours left before the NFT day gets over lol

We didn't have time to work on the design much. We didn't even change the font size or colour.

We just rolled with it.

In the moment of heat, my dude couldn't remember how to do a few things on the website. (Coder’s Block… if that’s even a thing) We’ve been working for hours now.

He got multiple calls to figure it out.

I on the other hand was super tensed. If we don't push it by 9, I might as well just drop the project.

I started calling everyone I see in DSH to come to view the code real quick. They helped a bit

In the end, we both didn't give up.

Website ✅
Testnets ✅
Contract ✅
Added images to IPFS ✅

Now deploy this on the mainnet.

Problem: I don't know how to deploy it on the mainnet.
Solution: Create a new account.

We spent some more time creating one. I sent the ETH to the new account and he deployed the contract on the mainnet.

Total cost so far: 0.03ETH (about $40)

The project was live 🚀

Opensea was up.

I minted the first NFT 🙏

It's time to publish. I sent the message to 2-3 friends who were helping in the project and wrote this tweet

Then I shared the tweet's link into 4 telegram groups (2 small and 2 big)

Opened Twitter and saw this reply 👇

Some random fren had my back :)))))

Meanwhile, I and D were on the call and I was just checking Opensea.

It's been about 20mins.

I almost lost my shit after I saw this on Opensea 🤯

I open OS and it said 1.8k NFTs minted. WTF.

WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT'S GOING ON.

We first thought we got hacked. Someone found a loophole in the contract and minted all the NFTs.

Now, they are selling it on the market for $5-$10

I couldn't believe what was happening.

I got scared and told Dheeraj to stop the minting.

We need to figure out what's going on.

Dheeraj thought there was a bug on the website. The pop-up when someone mints kept showing up.

Later we realised that real people were actually minting the NFTs.

Meanwhile, when minting was off, I made a mistake.

I got greedy.

I asked him to increase the supply to 10k.

Soon realising that it was a mistake.

But when we stopped the minting, we lost traction because transactions were failing.

Had stop was at 1895 mints 🚀

Two things happened while all this was happening:

• My macbook crashed :(

• And I felt super dizzy because of no food + less sleep.

My laptop came back up and I opened OS and TW.

OS said that we are still minting, which is a good thing.

But on Twitter, we were getting effed.

At this moment, I deeply regretted few things.

The art is bad
We messed up the contracts
Design is shitty
I got greedy (increased the supply)
Absolutely no preparation at all.

But the good part was that we made mistakes.

Especially the mistakes that didn't cost us much 🙌

Thank you for reading this extensively big BehindTheStory.

Check out the project website her.

---

Before I go I want to talk two things:

1. A small mistake.

2. Thank you note.

When we created the 30 different JPEGs we had thought that we will code it off in such a way that all the 2009 NFTs will get the pictures.

But when we saw after minting only the first 30 were revealed others NFTs were not available.

We quickly realised that we made a mistake because one… we should've added 2009 JPEGs on IPFS which is then connected to NFTs individually or add the json file of 30 multiplied by number of mints. This was all the NFTs had information connected to them.

Even I don’t know how it works technically but I had asked him will having only 30 images work… he said yes but even he was not sure. He hasn’t done this before.

We had to go with whatever we had 🙌

But next day morning, we rectified our error and added the info on the contract. Voila :)

---

I want to thank people behind this project.

Developer: Dheeraj (This project wouldn’t be possible without you)

Two anon friends who acted as advisors on the project. Forever grateful.

Few friends who answered our random questions at random times. Thank you.

Prado (Thanks for the amazing feeling. Living is one, feeling alive is another) also, thanks for not giving up.

Last of all I want you to Pat yourself in the back. Thank you for reading and supporting me and the project.

In this together,

Prado out

Website | Twitter | 100NFTs Website | Twitter 100NFTs | Opensea

To document that you read this whole BehindTheStory essay, you can mint it as an NFT too 🙌