Minting

Minting is the act of creating a new token on a blockchain — most often used for NFTs, where minting means writing a brand-new token into a smart contract and assigning it to its first owner. Before minting, the item exists only as a plan or a file; after minting, it exists as an on-chain token that can be held, transferred, and sold.

In a typical NFT launch, a project deploys a smart contract and opens a mint window: users connect a wallet, pay the mint price plus a network transaction fee, and the contract issues them one or more tokens. For example, someone minting from a 10,000-piece collection might pay a fixed price and receive a randomly assigned token whose artwork is revealed later.

A common misconception is that minting uploads the image itself to the blockchain; usually only the token record and a metadata link go on-chain, while the media lives elsewhere, such as on IPFS. Minting also describes creating fungible tokens — a stablecoin issuer mints new units when customers deposit dollars — so the word broadly means "bring new tokens into existence," with burning as its opposite.