How to Airdrop NFTs on Tezos; which essentially means giving away your NFTs for free. Why give away your NFT for free? You worked hard on your NFT why just give it out for free? Well I’ll start off by giving you three good reasons to give away your NFT for FREE:

1. Build a community: Airdropping is a great way to build a community around your art, especially for new artists. Being a new artist myself, through airdropping I’ve been able to reach new collectors that may not want to take a chance at buying one of my pieces because I’m brand new to the art scene.
2. Collect a royalty: Even though there is an upfront cost to airdrop each NFT; the cost on Tezos is very cheap. You can spend very little to mint and airdrop NFTs and collectors are more willing to accept a high royalty of 20% or more on a free NFT. So you are betting that you will bring value to your collectors over the years, as well as make money on your royalty.
3. Support your collectors: I unexpectedly received an airdropped NFT from one of the creators that I previously bought from. It made me feel appreciated by the creator for supporting their work. I fully believe that airdropping NFTs to your previous collectors makes them feel valued and makes them want to collect your future NFTs because they feel valued by you.

So what is airdropping? Airdropping is the process of sending an NFT directly to someone at no cost to them. I say “no cost to them” because there will be a cost to you to mint and a cost to you to send the NFT. Compared to Ethereum, this cost is very cheap on Tezos. At the time of writing, I’ve airdropped 18 NFTs to people and it has only cost me about 2.6 $XTZ; which is around $11.60 US Dollars. To do the same thing on Ethereum it will cost you $100+ US Dollars because the Gas fees are so high.

If you’re like me, the process of airdropping is very manual and this is the process I describe below; how to manually airdrop NFTs. I’m sure someone smarter than me can create a way to automatically airdrop to wallets and maybe even make a smart contract to do this but I’ll leave that to the experts. In this article, I want to show you how you can easily airdrop with no technical experience at all.

For this blog, I minted my photography NFT on objkt.com but you can also mint your NFT on hicetnunc.art and the process is still the same. The is because I am showing you how to do it through the Temple Wallet browser extension. While trying to airdrop NFTs via objkt.com I found multiple transactions failing (which is not what you want to happen when you promise something to people on Twitter). Using the Temple wallet, every transaction went through but one, which I think was my fault.

How to Airdrop

First thing you want to do, if you haven’t already, is buy Tezos on a centralized exchange, transfer it to a Tezos wallet, and mint (create) your first NFT. I explained that whole process for objkt.com in this blog post here and the same process for hicetnunc.art in this blog post here, so I won’t dive into it in this blog.

After you’ve minted your NFT you need to share it and drive some demand. I’ve found two ways to drive demand using twitter:

1. Posting a new tweet on your feed to your followers.
2. Posting into #Tezos and #Shill threads so collectors and other creators can find your NFT.

Make sure to ask them to drop their Tezos address, you will need that to send them the NFT. I posted an example tweet below.

Once a collector shares their Tezos address copy it and go to your Temple wallet. A good tip here is to open the wallet up in a browser window; makes the process so much easier.

When you open the wallet it will automatically open with “Tokens”. Select “Collectibles” to the right of Tokens.

Once you select Collectibles, select your NFT you would like to airdrop. The next screen will ask you for the Recipient and Amount. Recipient can be a standard Tezos address or you can put a Tezos domain in there like Varras.tez.

After you paste the address enter the amount you would like to send. This will be how many NFTs you send to that address. I only send one NFT to each person so I put “1” in the amount field.

After you fill out the Recipient and Amount fields you will see an option to pay an Additional Fee to speed up your transaction. The more you pay, the faster the transaction will confirm on the blockchain. Don’t worry, the fee is always minimal. I typically choose the fast option so I can ensure the airdrop is delivered right away.

After you click send, the Temple wallet will show you the cost and address you want to send the NFT to, as well as ask you to confirm the transaction. Quickly double check everything looks correct and then click “Confirm” to send the airdrop. If something is wrong and you need to decline, you will NOT be charged any $XTZ.

After confirming the airdrop, you will be sent to the Success page! Congratulations! You’ve just completed your first airdrop!! What I like to do next is share the transaction with the collector so they know to expect the airdrop in their wallet. You can get the transaction hash by clicking the arrow to the right of the “Operation Hash”.

Clicking that arrow will bring you to the TzKT site where it will show your airdrop transaction and whether it’s been confirmed on the blockchain or not.

TzKT.io is also a great resource to look up any wallet or transaction on the Tezos blockchain. It has the same functionality as etherscan.

Like I mentioned, copy the URL for the operation hash on TzKT.io and paste it in a reply to the collector! Not only does it prove you sent them the NFT but it also shows other collectors that you’re not fake and you are sending free NFTs, which makes them more likely to share their Tezos address (and help build your community).

That’s all! You’ve now airdropped your first NFT to a collector, congrats! Repeat this process however many times you need to airdrop your NFTs to more collectors.

Tips

While airdropping NFTs I’ve learned a couple tips that I’ve listed below for you:

• objkt.com won’t let you send to Tezos domains (e.g., Varras.tez); you can only send to a Tezos address (e.g., tz1MJTV…) but the Temple Wallet will let you send to Tezos domains
• One thing I would recommend when you mint your NFT is to mint more than one so you can airdrop this NFT to multiple collectors. I minted 50 initially and as a new artist I’m finding 50 a little hard to giveaway. I think someone with a small following like myself is better off only minting 15 or 20 to give out to collectors

Recap & Next Steps

High level recap of the steps is below from when you mint your NFT:

1. Drive demand for your airdrop NFT by posting to twitter and commenting on threads; make sure to ask for their Tezos address as well.
2. Open your Temple Wallet and select your NFT you want to airdrop.
3. Fill out the Recipient and Amount fields and select how much you’d like to pay in gas to confirm the transaction; then click confirm.
4. Review the information to make sure it’s correct and then click confirm again.
5. Success! Click on the arrow next to the hash number to open up TzKT.io with the confirmation information.
6. Copy the url confirmation page and paste it in a reply tweet to the collector that dropped their address for proof that you sent them the NFT.

In total, it cost me around 2.8 $XTZ to mint and airdrop 20 NFTs. If you’d like, you can view the NFT I airdropped here, along with the other NFTs I’ve created.

Feel free to ask me any questions over on twitter @varrasNFT or give me a follow if you like the content and want to learn more!

Thanks for taking the time to read!

-Varras