NFTS! They are all the craze, and have been for a minute. There is at least something interesting about minting tokens, by the creator of the art, to signify someone "owns" something.

Earlier this year I got really into computer generated art. I automated some scripts that would take 8 hours on my personal computer down to 5 minutes on AWS.

I wanted to see if I could combine this computer generated art and timed releases for fun. More on that at a later date. Right now we are focusing on getting through this tutorial. Now I have never touched anything solana before today, and I am up and running. It's possible.

Tutorial Annotation as of September 17th, 2021

The only thing I would note about the top instructions is, I would also run

brew install jq

The yarn run package:macos build step did not work for me. I had to run:

npx pkg . -d --targets node14-macos-x64 --output bin/macos/metaplex

Next I used zsh and my path is /usr/local/bin so my command was

 cp bin/macos/metaplex /usr/local/bin

I followed the tutorial until:

I created a folder called assets in a random directory. I then added 5 images and 5 .json files. Here is my json file from 0.png

{
    "name": "png0",
    "symbol": "",
    "description": "testing dreamland",
    "seller_fee_basis_points": 5,
    "image": "https://www.arweave.net/abcd5678?ext=png",
    "external_url": "google.com",
    "collection": {
        "name": "Dreamland Test",
        "family": "Dreamland"
    },
    "properties": {
        "files": [
            {
                "uri": "https://www.arweave.net/abcd5678?ext=png",
                "type": "image/png"
            }
        ],
        "category": "image/png",
        "creators": [
            {
                "address": "REDACTED",
                "share": 100
            }
        ]
    }
}

Now it's my understanding that matrix replaces the url once you upload. The parts that matter are seller_fee_basis_points and creators. I'm not totally sure what is required, but this was a good read about the metadata file.

Next I verified all the properties they were looking for. This is where brew install jq is helpful. Lastly I just cd into assets directory so my final command was:

metaplex upload . --env devnet --keypair ~/.config/solana/devnet.json

The articles mentions multiple errors, I did not get any. Next we need to look at our cache file to grab the config id:

code .cache/devnet-temp

I would then give it a few minutes. The article says to call a metaplex verify but that cannot be done without a create candy machine. To create one in my terminal I run

metaplex create_candy_machine --keypair ~/.config/solana/devnet.json

And it returns: candy machine pubkey. Keep this value close.

Setting mint date

To set the mint date you need to pass in a date string. I learned this by running metaplex update_candy_machine -h

Now we have all the necessary values set, we need to head over to our .env file on our frontend.

// from .cache/devnet-temp
// config value
REACT_APP_CANDY_MACHINE_CONFIG=
// return value from create_candy_machine
// candy machine pubkey
REACT_APP_CANDY_MACHINE_ID=
// I just put my solana wallet address?
REACT_APP_TREASURY_ADDRESS=
// unix date
// 1631923920
REACT_APP_CANDY_START_DATE=1631923920

REACT_APP_SOLANA_NETWORK=devnet
REACT_APP_SOLANA_RPC_HOST=https://explorer-api.devnet.solana.com

I didn't include quotes with my values. After all of this you should be able to Yarn Start and be able to connect your wallet.

Shout out Levi Korg for putting so much work in. I'm excited to learn more about matrix and hopefully host my own auction.

Hope this helps someone!