As many of you know, STart Crypto operates on the Ethereum blockchain. Making any type of transaction on this blockchain requires a digital wallet, thereby making it one of the most important tools to creating and selling your Rare Digital Art on STart Crypto. You will use your digital wallet to store your creations and collection, authenticate your artwork, make payments and collect profits. This article will provide an introduction into this technology and how it works on STart Crypto.
What’s a Digital Wallet?
A digital wallet is a tool built on blockchain technology, that serves as both your identity and the mechanism to sign and store the digital artworks that you create and sell. Every artwork that you upload on STart Crypto will use your digital wallet to issue authentic copies of your artwork. Collectors place significant value on the artworks on STart Crypto because of the authenticity and verifiability of each artwork, due to this signature.
If you’d like to learn more about the technology behind digital wallet technology, you can read the wikipedia article here.
How Digital Wallets work on STart Crypto
When you first sign up on STart Crypto, you have the option to either use your personal digital wallet or use a digital wallet issued and managed by STart Crypto.
Using a STart Crypto-Issued Wallet
If you’re completely new to blockchain technology, we recommend using the STart Crypto issued digital wallet until you become more familiar — you can always connect a personal wallet in the future.
There are a few technical hurdles and concepts to familiarize yourself with as you first begin creating Rare Digital Art including: managing your secret key, understanding blockchain transaction fees, speeding up transactions and more.
With a STart Crypto-issued wallet, you can just start creating without needing to understand these concepts, although we highly encourage you to learn these concepts over time.
Things to note about a STart Crypto-issued Digital Wallet:
- This wallet is entirely managed by STart Crypto. Access to these wallets is limited for security purposes.
- This wallet is dedicated to you and will serve as the proof of authenticity for all artworks that you create on STart Crypto.
- This wallet is only used for creation. Do not send any funds or tokens to this wallet. Gaining access to these wallet is deliberately very difficult for security reasons.
Using a Personal Digital Wallet
If you are familiar with the world of blockchain we recommend you connect your own personal digital wallet to your account. Using your own digital wallet when navigating STart Crypto (and beyond) grants you the autonomy to fully manage your own artwork sales, transfers, transaction fees, etc.
How To Set Up Your Personal Wallet
IMPORTANT: Please follow these best practices when using a personal wallet. Artists have lost access to all of their artworks for not following these best practices.
Ethereum Wallets:
At the moment, STart Crypto only supports Ethereum-based digital wallets only. If you don’t currently own a digital wallet, we recommend MetaMask.
Your Private Key:
When you create a digital wallet, you will be assigned a 12 word key phrase. This private key acts as a recovery phrase in case you lose your password or are locked out of your wallet for any reason. It is imperative that you store this key in a safe and secure place, if you lose it, you will lose access to all the contents of your wallet forever.
Once you have successfully created your digital wallet (and stored your key in a super safe place), these are the steps to connect your personal wallet to your STart Crypto account:
- Go to your Account Settings page: https://makersplace.com/profile/
- Click on Connect your Personal Wallet
3. Connect your Digital Wallet
4. Give our Smart Contract escrow access to your artworks.
This last step ensures that STart Crypto is able to transfer your artworks to buyers of your artworks upon sale. Please use a reasonably high GWEI when providing this approval, so that your request completes in time.
5. Verify that you see your digital wallet set as your Primary Address under your creation wallet addresses. If your wallet does not show up here as your primary address, you may have missed a step.
Connecting a Coinbase Account
If you decide to use a STart Crypto managed wallet, you can receive payment directly to your Coinbase account, which you can set up in your Payment Settings. Coinbase is one of the most reputable cryptocurrency exchanges and also allows you to convert your Ethereum to your local currency.
Once your funds arrive in your Coinbase account, you can transfer them directly to your bank account or transfer them to another wallet. This must be done within Coinbase, not STart Crypto.
*Coinbase wallets are for currency ONLY, never attempt to send an NFT to your Coinbase wallet.
Collection vs Creation vs Payment Wallets
It is important to know the difference between the wallets you use to store your collection, mint your creations and collect your payments.
Collection Wallet: This is the wallet which will host your NFT collection, which you connect in your Account Settings. It must be an ETH wallet, like MetaMask or Ledger.
If you purchased artworks before connecting your own ETH wallet, they will be stored on a STart Crypto Issued wallet. You can send these artworks to your own ETH wallet in Send Creations. If you set a price on the artwork you will need to Edit Price > Cancel Sale in the Manage Creations before sending. Please be aware that gas fees will be required to make transfers.
Creation Wallet: If you are a creator, this is where you will mint, sign and store your creations. You will set this wallet up during on-boarding in your Account Settings. It must be an ETH wallet, like MetaMask or Ledger.
Payments Wallets: Any sales you make on the site, whether it’s a primary sale from one of your own creations or a secondary sale from an artwork you collected, will be paid out into your payment wallet. Connect your payment wallet in Payment Settings. It can be either an ETH wallet like MetaMask OR a conversion wallet like Coinbase.
Other Things You Should Know About Digital Wallets
Hardware vs Software Wallets:
There are two types of wallets — A hardware wallet is an external drive which must be plugged in to access digital currency and a software wallet which is a non-physical program that you download onto your computer, usually as an extension or app. Hardware wallets provide additional security since they are not directly connected to the internet. You can learn more about the differences between hardware vs software wallets here.
Software wallets, like MetaMask, are connected directly to the internet. You can connect hardware wallets to your MetaMask wallet. STart Crypto currently supports Ledger hardware wallets, if you decide to use another hardware wallet please let us know beforehand so we can test and verify it for you.
Gas — Blockchain Fees
Every transaction on the Ethereum blockchain requires a gas fee, which goes towards compensating the operators of the ETH network. You can think of gas fees as a blockchain sales tax. Gas fees fluctuate depending on ETH blockchain usage, when many transactions are being initiated on the ETH network then gas fees will rise and vice versa.
Essentially every single transaction involving your digital wallet on STart Crypto will require a gas fee. You can check this site to monitor current gas prices, and make your transactions when GWEI(the gas price measurement metric) is low.
Here are a few terms to help you understand how gas fees are calculated:
Gas Limit — The number of units required to complete the specific transaction. For example, the gas limit required for minting an artwork is much higher than accepting a bid. Gas limits will change depending on what transaction you are trying to complete.
Gas Prices — Gas prices are defined by GWEI, which is defined by current Ethereum blockchain usage. There are three Gas Price options which determine how quickly the transaction is carried through. The trader option is the fastest (and priciest) — transactions should go through in under a minute with the trader option. The fast option is the second quickest and priciest, with transactions being completed in 2–5 minutes. (When you speed up a transaction on STart Crypto we will use the fast option.) Lastly, the standard option is, you guessed it, the slowest and the cheapest with transactions being completed in 5 minutes or more.
Your MetaMask will autofill gas limits and gas prices in a pop up when you are completing a transaction, HOWEVER, it is important that you do not blindly click through. Be sure to look over the gas fee and gas limits, as carelessly clicking could result in paying way more than you need to in gas (learn more below). If you are manually inputting the gas limit and prices, also act with extreme caution or risk ending up like this guy.
“Help! I Can’t Connect My Digital Wallet!” — Troubleshooting Tips
If you are having issues connecting your digital wallet to your account, take a look at these troubleshooting tips. If none help you, reach out to our support team via email or Discord.
- Double check that the wallet is not associated with any other STart Crypto accounts
- Make sure that you are using a MetaMask Wallet
- Make sure that you’re logged into your digital wallet and have connected STart Crypto to your wallet. If done successfully the top left corner should say “Connected” in green
4. Make sure that the proper wallet address is selected
5. Make sure you are connected to the correct network (Main Ethereum Network)
“Help! I Am Seeing An Extremely High Gas Fee” — Troubleshooting Tips
If you are seeing a high gas fees of over $100 dollars for transactions you know require much less, follow these trouble shooting tips to get to the bottom of the inflated fees. If none help you, reach out to our support team via email or Discord.
- Make sure that you have enough funds in your wallet to cover the actual gas fees.
2. Make sure you are properly logged in and connected (see above)
3. Trying logging out and back into your wallet.
Get in Touch
If you ever have any questions, please reach out to us or our community by joining our Discord community.
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