There is no such thing as free lunch, they say - but is it still possible to get hold of NFTs for free? For this article, the first statement still holds true, but what is to be considered as free are those transactions that involve anything except additional money as capital. Here are some of the ways to acquire free NFTs listed from the easiest to the most difficult.
Even without making an effort, there is a minute chance that you’ll get a free NFT out of nowhere - as long as you qualify for certain conditions, such as being an active user in a certain network, being able to swap tokens, and holding a certain amount of tokens. One of the recent NFT airdrops occurred in Binance. Along with other conditions, holders of at least 100 TRX, 2,000,000 BTTC, 2,000 BTTOLD, 100 JST, or 15,000 WIN are eligible to receive an airdrop of APENFTs.
Crypto Twitter and Reddit is the home for most projects and influencers. Word gets across pretty quick there! To make things quicker, many usually host giveaways to gain a following early on. If one has enough time and does not mind getting their feed filled by retweets, they could spend a decent amount of effort into joining giveaways. Most require public retweets, follows, and likes to partake in the raffle.
Some NFTs also do not have a mint price. There is no barrier to entry with regards to price, but other barriers do exist. Besides being subjected to gas wars, there is also a barrier to having the right to mint. This is where the concept of being whitelisted comes into play. Hustle is really the key to getting in these exclusive groups. Though the mints themselves are free, getting your hands into these opportunities may not be. Those who can afford may even hire a group of whitelisters so they can get a slot without spending too much time on Twitter and Discord. Goblin Town and Loot are a few of the notable NFT projects that launched for free.
It’s quite rare to find free-to-play games, but it’s possible! Some game mechanics are driven by finding loot, trading them, or breeding different NFTs. Some of which are Sunflower Land, Alien Worlds, and CropBytes. There must be a ton of other games out there, but what’s difficult is gauging the sustainability of the game.
Staking with an added-feature of voting power has become a mechanism for several decentralized exchanges and lending protocols. The way this works is that the money deposited is exchanged for veNFTs - allowing the user to sell their rights to the deposits and also gain voting power. This is free in a sense that no additional capital has to be laid out - instead, what is needed is to sacrifice some liquidity. As opposed to its predecessor, veTokens, veNFTs are tradeable on secondary markets - making it have slightly better advantage on liquidity. A few protocols have attempted to adopt this mechanism, such as Izumi Finance and Solidly.
Aside from gas fees, it is entirely free to create an NFT collection. With a brilliant mind and a creative pair of hands, one can easily deploy smart contracts to give birth to NFTs. Nevertheless, it takes a lot of time, effort, and consistency to make them big.
Though capital is almost non-existent in acquiring free NFTs, gains are still difficult to achieve. NFTs, just like tokens, are subject to supply and demand. For free NFTs, supply may be relatively easy to attain and be part of. However, demand is out of the user’s control; most times, it is even out of the creator’s control.
