NFT glossary: every term, plain language

A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique record written to a blockchain. Unlike a JPEG saved on a hard drive, the ownership entry on the chain cannot be copied or quietly altered by a single party. Each NFT has its own token ID, which points to metadata describing what the token represents, whether that is a piece of digital art, a membership pass or an in-game item. Two NFTs can look identical and still be separate tokens with separate histories, which is what non-fungible means: not interchangeable the way dollars or SOL are.

The blockchain that records the NFT matters for speed and cost. Ethereum is the most established chain for NFTs, but transactions can be expensive when the network is busy. Solana processes transactions faster and at a fraction of the cost, which is why many high-volume collections launch there. Ethereum-compatible chains like Polygon or Base inherit Ethereum's tooling but aim for lower fees. iMintify supports Solana and the major EVM-compatible chains, so you deploy to the chain that fits your audience and your budget, not the one a platform forces on you.

Minting is the act of writing an NFT to the blockchain for the first time. Before minting can happen, someone has to deploy a smart contract: the on-chain program that defines your collection's rules, its supply cap, the price per mint, who is on the allowlist and how royalties are calculated. Deploying costs gas because it is a complex transaction. Once the contract is live, each individual mint is a simpler transaction and costs less gas, though the cost still varies with network congestion. On Ethereum mainnet, a single deployment can cost anywhere from a few dollars to over a hundred dollars on a busy day. On Solana, the same step typically costs a fraction of a cent.

Gas is paid in the native currency of the chain: ETH on Ethereum, SOL on Solana. It goes to the validators who process your transaction, not to iMintify or any marketplace. This is the fee you cannot avoid regardless of which platform you use to create your contract. What you can do is time your deployment. On Ethereum, gas prices drop during low-traffic periods, typically late night UTC on weekdays. Tools like Etherscan's gas tracker show the current base fee so you can pick your window. On Solana, fees are stable enough that timing is rarely a concern.

A smart contract is code that lives on the blockchain and runs automatically when conditions are met. For an NFT collection, the contract handles minting, tracks who owns which token and enforces royalties on secondary sales. On Ethereum, the two dominant standards are ERC-721, where every token is unique under the contract, and ERC-1155, which allows multiple copies of the same item to be managed under one contract. ERC-1155 is efficient for editions or games where you want thousands of identical items alongside rarer ones. On Solana, the equivalent is the SPL token standard, which governs both fungible tokens and NFTs.

Royalties are written into the contract as a percentage, for example five percent of every secondary sale routed back to the creator's wallet. Whether marketplaces actually enforce that percentage depends on the marketplace. Some have made royalties optional to attract volume. On-chain royalty enforcement through standards like EIP-2981 on Ethereum or programmable royalties on Solana gives creators more leverage, but it is not a guarantee that every resale will pay out. When you set up your contract in iMintify, you choose the royalty percentage and the recipient wallet at deploy time.

Metadata is the JSON file attached to each NFT that tells marketplaces what to display: the name, description, image URL and any traits or attributes. If that JSON file disappears or the URL it references goes offline, the NFT still exists on-chain but shows as a broken image everywhere. This is why storage matters. Keeping metadata on a regular web server means one hosting bill going unpaid can erase every image in your collection. IPFS, the InterPlanetary File System, is a decentralized network where files are addressed by their content hash rather than a domain name. If the file exists anywhere on IPFS, it is retrievable. Arweave goes a step further with a one-time fee model designed for permanent storage.

When you upload assets through iMintify, the platform pins your files to IPFS so the metadata your contract references is not dependent on a single server. Traits defined in your metadata are what marketplaces use to calculate rarity. Each trait has a type, for example Background, and a value, for example Red. A collection of ten thousand PFP NFTs might have twenty trait types with varying numbers of possible values. Rarer values appear in fewer tokens. Rarity is not set by you directly: it emerges from how many tokens share each combination of trait values.

An allowlist, sometimes called a whitelist, is a set of wallet addresses that can mint before or at different terms than the general public. Allowlist spots are typically earned through community participation, early sign-ups or holding a previous collection. In the contract, allowlist addresses are often stored in a Merkle tree, which lets the contract verify membership without storing every address individually on-chain, saving gas. A common launch structure has an allowlist phase with a lower price or a guaranteed mint window, followed by a public phase where anyone can mint until supply runs out. If you sell out during the allowlist phase, the public sale never opens.

Floor price is the lowest asking price for any NFT in a collection on the secondary market. It is not set by the creator but by sellers. A project can launch at 0.1 ETH and see its floor drop to 0.01 ETH if demand falls, or rise above mint price if demand exceeds supply. Watching floor price movement tells you something about community sentiment, but it is a lagging signal and easy to manipulate with wash trading. Airdropping tokens, sending NFTs or fungible tokens directly to wallets at no cost, is another tool creators use to reward holders or bootstrap a new collection's distribution.

A crypto wallet stores the private key that proves you control an address on the blockchain. Popular options include MetaMask for EVM chains and Phantom for Solana. The wallet does not hold your NFT the way a folder holds a file: the NFT record lives on-chain, and your wallet gives you the key to sign transactions from that address. If you lose your seed phrase and have no backup, you lose access permanently. There is no password reset. This is not a scare tactic; it is the operational reality of self-custody, and every creator deploying a contract needs a hardware wallet or at minimum an offline seed phrase backup for the deployer address.

Once minted, NFTs trade on secondary marketplaces like OpenSea, Blur or Magic Eden. Each marketplace has its own fee structure, typically a percentage taken from the seller on each transaction. iMintify generates a mint website, a hosted page with your collection details and a mint button, when you deploy your contract. That page is separate from secondary marketplaces: it is where buyers mint during the primary sale. After the supply is minted out, trading moves entirely to secondary platforms. A reveal is when a collection minted blind, meaning buyers received a placeholder image, shows the final artwork. Reveals are usually triggered by the creator after the primary sale closes.