A Beginner's Guide to Aptos NFTs

Aptos is the newest Layer 1 blockchain to hit the mainnet, and while the royalties war rages on for Solana, I thought it would be worth exploring the basics of Aptos NFTs. Bare with me, as I'm still extremely new to this chain, but I guess we all are really at this point. We'll take a look at how to set up our Aptos wallet and what marketplaces we should look at for buying and selling our NFTs.

Note: This article is subject to change and will likely be updated often as Aptos continues to develop. This guide also assumes you have knowledge of some basic principles of NFTs from other chains, specifically Solana.

Setting Up Our Wallet

As always, we can't do anything without our wallets. Seeing as they're all new, I don't know which wallet is considered the best yet. For now, we'll cover two options that seem to be used the most so far, Petra and Martian.

Petra is pretty straightforward and simple. It's basically the Aptos version of Phantom, and operates very similarly. Head over to the site, click download to go to the extension installation page, and install. Once installed, open the extension and create a new wallet. It will ask you to create a password. On the next page, it will give you your secret recovery phrase, or your seed phrase. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PIECE OF INFORMATION. In case you ever forget your password or lose access to your computer that has your wallet, this phrase is the ONLY way to recover your wallet. If you lose this, your wallet is as good as gone. Make sure you store this in several secure places. The phrase itself will consist of 12 randomly selected words in a randomized order. NEVER give this phrase out to anyone who asks. Once you verify your seed phrase, you're all set! Your wallet will look like the one below:

You'll see your address at the top, listed as "account." Library tab at the bottom where you'll be able to see your NFTs. Activity tab that will show your recent transactions. Settings for....yup, settings. You can now use a crypto exchange of your choosing to send APT to your newly made wallet.

Don't like Petra? No worries. Let's try Martian. Same process to set up as Petra. Go to the site, click download, install the extension. Create a password, get your recovery phrase, and receive your wallet.

Martian is a bit more intricate looking than Petra, although still similar enough that you will easily know how to use it. It does have an extra tab at the bottom symbolized by the binoculars. This tab lets you explore Aptos apps and NFT collections directly from your wallet. It's actually a pretty cool feature, and I think this gives it an upper hand over Petra in my opinion. Again, your wallet address is at the top and you can use that to deposit APT. You can purchase APT from a Centralized Exchange (CEX) such as Coinbase or Binance. Once you purchase it on there, you can send it to the wallet address we created above.

Now we've got our wallet and our APT. Let's go shopping.

NFT Marketplace

The main marketplace for Aptos (at least now until their own marketplace wars start) appears to Topaz.

With their own launchpad already in place and a full list of upcoming projects, it seems Topaz is off to a hot start. The UI of the site is very easy to navigate and is similar to any other marketplace you may have used on Solana. You can search for collections, see the current top collections by volume, see upcoming mints, etc.

If you're looking for an NFT to buy (after doing your research of course) you can browse the site until you find one that suits you. Simply connect your wallet and click buy when you're ready. On the contrary, if you're looking to sell an NFT, go to your profile page in the top right. From there you can click on the NFT you want to sell and set up the listing.

Summary

Given how new the chain is, this guide is pretty brief for now. As mentioned at the beginning, it will very likely change as things develop if Aptos actually starts to gain traction.

Another important thing to note is - BE SAFE! With new chains, come new scams. People are going to try and take advantage of new users while they're still acclimating to the new ecosystem. Besides minting an NFT from a project's mint site, which you get directly from their discord or Twitter ONLY, I don't recommend connecting your wallet to anything else besides Topaz for the time being. Of course, as always, use a burner wallet when minting.

I'm not sure yet how big or little of a market Aptos will end up being for NFTs, but for now, we have to be prepared for any good projects that make their way over to APT. I hope you find the information here helpful to get you started as we embark on a new journey together!