Dear Bankless Nation,

In the not so distant future, most NFT transactions will take place through Ethereum layer-two (L2) scaling solutions.

The idea? Very fast, very cheap transactions!

The good news is we’re well on the way to this future. NFT mints are on the rise on L2s like Optimism, Zora Network, and beyond.

But how best to discover and collect from new creative projects on these frontier networks?

We’re all in luck here, as mint discovery platform mint.fun just rolled out support for its first L2s. Let’s show you how you can tap in here for today’s post!

-WMP

Minting L2 NFTs on mint.fun 🎉

A mint.fun refresher…

First launched in June 2022, mint.fun is an NFT platform that aggregates active mints into a one-stop discovery and minting hub.

Accordingly, mint.fun surfaces new drops for collectors as they happen within a single convenient interface, and it aggregates lots of key project info and performs automated safety checks so you never have to mint blindly, so to speak.

Along with other features like an aggregated “Offers” dashboard for current buy offers on any NFTs you hold, mint.fun also notably maintains a !fundrop rewards program, which lets you earn !fundrop points for actions like minting through mint.fun or downloading the platform’s extension.

Stacking these points will make you eligible for special rewards from the platform over time, but keep in mind that your score only starts getting tallied if you mint a !fundrop pass, a dynamic NFT that keeps track of your accrued !fundrop points.

What’s new?

Originally mint.fun only supported the aggregation of mints from across Ethereum. This week, though, the platform’s team made waves in announcing their expanded support for L2 minting, starting with the Optimism and Zora Network chains.

Getting started by bridging

If you want to start minting Optimism or Zora Network NFTs via mint.fun, you’ll need to bridge some funds over before you can begin on the L2 side of things.

For this, mint.fun now offers a bridging interface directly on its platform. You’d simply connect your wallet to the site, click on the wallet button on the top right side of the page, and then press “Bridge ETH” to bring up the interface.

Here, there are two important things to keep in mind. First, mint.fun only offers bridging from Ethereum to these L2s right now. If you want to withdraw funds back to Ethereum later, you’ll need to use a separate dedicated bridging service.

Secondly, Zora Network’s brand new, so “fast bridges” like Hop don’t support it yet. As such, its “optimistic” L2 style means withdrawals from it can take ~7 days at the moment, so don’t bridge in unaware of this dynamic!

Trying out an L2 mint

Once you have funds bridged in to your network of choice, minting’s the easy part! You can surf trending projects on the mint.fun homepage, or the platform also highlights a “Featured project” that you can consider at any given time.

At the time of writing, the featured project on the platform was the free commemorative mint.fun x Optimism launch NFT, which we’ll use as an example here. So you can click on the name of the project that’s caught your eye, after which you’ll be brought to a dedicated mint page like so:

If the project enforces a 1 mint per wallet rule, you’ll encounter a button that says “Mint 1” like seen above, otherwise you’ll be given further options as applicable, like “Mint 2,” “Mint 5,” etc.

Next you’d press the “Mint” button, switch your network if prompted by your wallet (e.g. to Optimism in this case), and then take a final pass at reviewing the mint info. If everything looks good complete the mint transaction and voila, that’s all it takes to mint L2 NFTs on mint.fun! It’s super affordable, too — when I minted the “Optimism launch” NFT while writing this post, the transaction only cost 0.000018 ETH worth of gas, or $0.04 USD.

Zooming out

My two gwei? Since Zora Network arrived I’ve been keen to mint cool things on the L2, but before now I’ve had a bit of trouble readily finding new mints there. Now with mint.fun’s L2 support, discovery is as simple as heading over to the platform and using the “Chains” filter to hone in on fresh Zora drops. The L2 NFT scene just got much more accessible accordingly, and also let’s not forget: these are just the first L2s that mint.fun is supporting — more will come over time!