Tokenizing on OpenSea

Okay so you’re excited about all things Somnium and you have some awesome ideas that you’re dying to turn into (virtual) reality. But there’s one thing you don’t quite understand yet and that is how to tokenize stuff so you’ll be able to own, sell, trade the things you’ll be making and offering.

We at Somnium Times were scratching our heads as well. How does one go about that? Does one need to learn about ERC-721 tokens, about contracts, API’s and minting? Absolutely not! It will be possible to tokenize from within Somnium’s builder in due time, but OpenSea – the go to marketplace for Somnium land parcels, tents, teleporters and the like – already now offers a tokenizing feature via a so-called ‘storefront’. Once you have created a storefront you can add ‘items’ and these items will be the tokenized assets that you can sell, put on auction, gift away, you name it. No programming required!

To open a storefront, head over to opensea.io/storefronts. Here you will be able to create one by clicking the ‘Create’ button. On the subsequent ‘Create your storefront’ dialog you can upload a picture (it’s best to stick to the 350 x 350 pixels), enter a name, a symbol (like SSA for Somnium Space Art for example) and finally a description. When you click ‘Create’ in this dialog you will need to confirm the transaction using your connected wallet. It will cost you a few bucks, but you only need to do this once for every storefront.

Once the transaction has been confirmed on the blockchain, a new ERC-721 token contract will exist for which you can mint new tokens. And guess what, minting is as easy as creating a storefront. Simply open your storefront once it has been created and click ‘Create’ in the ‘Add new item’ box. This will open a new dialog in which you can add a picture, a description, etc. Click ‘Create’, confirm the transaction and voila, you have minted your very first token. Once it has been minted you can change the picture, description, etc., without any cost.

Note that minting via OpenSea via a storefront may not give you all the properties you need (as opposed to creating a custom contract via their API), but it sure is easy! Have fun and happy minting!