It’s Friday 4:55pm UTC and you’re set up patiently waiting for the 5:00pm mint of your favourite NFT project. The mint drops, and as you refresh the page for the 67th time within 2 minutes, 3056/5000 are now left. You suddenly realise that within moments it’s going to be sold out.
You try to mint again, but Metamask says you have insufficient funds. Bullshit. You’ve got the funds, but the Avalanche Network is so busy that gas fees are spiking and you’re not covered, you try the Buy button again. This time the transaction adds to the queue, so you speed up the first transaction and then you pay more to speed up the next transaction. With any luck, something will mint, right?
After not knowing what’s going on, you refresh the page 2 minutes later and to your dismay, the project is completely sold out. The floor price on secondary marketplaces is already 5 Avax for something that cost 1 Avax, 2 minutes ago. Frustration sets in, you did all the right things, including following the project from Day 1. But couldn’t make a purchase because you didn’t know the best settings for Metamask, and you have superfast broadband so what gives?
This is an all too familiar scenario for most early NFT collectors, and today we are going to break down how to set yourself up for success with high demand NFT projects with Metamask. All it takes is a little preparation.
First things first, although people have different opinions on white lists, it’s always best to try to get into a projects whitelist or presale stage, this way you’re at least guaranteed access to the more controlled early release phase. To do this, you most likely have to be active within the projects Discord or Twitter community.
If you’re not lucky enough to make the WL, make sure you have the funds to cover the costs of the mint and gas fees on the date. We make sure that we account for at least 20% in potential gas fees per transaction (although we have never used that much, thank you Avalanche Network!)
To do this, enable Advanced Gas Controls in your Metamask Settings under the Advanced tab.
Once you have clicked Buy on the project you’ve been waiting for, you will be presented with the transaction box, click Edit, and then Edit Suggest Gas fee.
Then simply add a 0 or two to the end of the Gas Limit drop down box, depending on your gas fee tolerance level.
The higher the better to increase your chance of a speedy and successful mint. What you are effectively doing here is increasing the priority of your transaction above others that are at a lower price. Rarely would you need to increase your gas fee unless it’s really important that your transaction is processed quickly.
A secondary tactic to consider is the use of multiple computers with individually loaded Metamask wallets, although this does come with a disclaimer that we don’t want to encourage people to snipe absolutely everything as seen in the sneaker markets. Some people believe that these practices have already bridged into our community and are contributing to the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it mints we have seen lately.
If you follow the above steps, you should be able to capture a mint for most projects. Yay!
Remember the key is to understand the above and add a few 0’s to your Gas Limit.
Our last piece of advice, if you’ve successfully minted a potential blue-chip project, then hold! Nobody likes paper hands. Except for Diamond Hand snipers.
If you have any potential mint tips for the community, please reach out and make sure to follow us on Twitter
If you liked this article, you’ll love How To Spot The Next Blue-Chip Avalanche NFT?
