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Mint a Video NFT

This guide provides information and instructions about minting video NFTs using the API:

  • Mint the Video NFT with Livpeer Studio
  • Work with a Contract
  • Create the Transaction
  • View the NFT

Note: If you know how to use tokenURI to mint an NFT only Step 1. and use the nftMetadataUrl field as the tokenURI for your NFT. The URL is compatible with both ERC-721 and ERC-1155.

Minting a Video NFT using Livepeer Studio​

  1. Upload the Video and configure the metadata for your NFT

  • You can use the @livepeer/video-nft. npm script to have a local file uploaded to Livepeer, exported to IPFS, and then mint the NFT out of it.

  • Alternatively, if you do not have node installed, you can use this script (bash) which works similarly.

  1. Get a [Livepeer API key] to use from the tool. (/quickstart#create-api-key)

  2. Then simply run npx @livepeer/video-nft. The CLI will ask you for any the information it needs and, in the end, will give you a URL for a simple page for minting the NFT.

Some tips in case you use it often:

  • Install it in your system with npm install -g @livepeer/video-nft and then use it as video-nft <args>
  • Set the API key on the LP_API_KEY environment variable to avoid the prompt for it.
  • Send all required properties as CLI arguments and avoid all the other prompts (good for scripting).
    • The filename can be passed as a single positional argument to the command;
    • The asset name can be set via the --asset-name flag and;
    • The NFT metadata can be specified on the --nft-metadata flag. It accepts either a raw JSON or a file with the metadata.

For Example:

$ npx @livepeer/video-nft
We need to install the following packages:
  @livepeer/video-nft@0.1.3
Ok, to proceed? (y) y
? Enter your Livepeer API key (learn more at http://bit.ly/lp-api-key): ********
****************************
Tip: You can set the LP_API_KEY environment variable to avoid this prompt.
? What file do you want to use? nasa25.mp4
You can also send the filename as an argument to this command.
? What name do you want to give to your NFT? NASA 25th bday
? Would you like to customize the NFT metadata? No
1. Requesting upload URL...
Pending asset with id=08266a15-ff67-4ce6-9b8c-dff485ff3825
2. Uploading file...
Waiting for import task completion... id=5412f48e-af58-4d1b-80a8-2ec818519ffe
 - progress: 35.3%
 - progress: 60.8%
 - progress: 92.30000000000001%
3. Starting export...
Created export task with id=b008532d-839b-4925-9833-094d2d6a1cc3
Waiting for export task completion... id=b008532d-839b-4925-9833-094d2d6a1cc3
 - progress: 99%
4. Export successful! Result:

{
  "videoFileCid": "QmcEZYeH2QxySWqHFcQbSovb43NGST4JaDBpeG1Tk4aXmA",
  "nftMetadataCid": "QmR2SaapDATg7q9vVG2NSaGbSE3KUBLfUN49Lb737HY88h",
  "videoFileUrl": "ipfs://QmcEZYeH2QxySWqHFcQbSovb43NGST4JaDBpeG1Tk4aXmA",
  "videoFileGatewayUrl": "https://ipfs.livepeer.studio/ipfs/QmcEZYeH2QxySWqHFcQbSovb43NGST4JaDBpeG1Tk4aXmA",
  "nftMetadataUrl": "ipfs://QmR2SaapDATg7q9vVG2NSaGbSE3KUBLfUN49Lb737HY88h",
  "nftMetadataGatewayUrl": "https://ipfs.livepeer.studio/ipfs/QmR2SaapDATg7q9vVG2NSaGbSE3KUBLfUN49Lb737HY88h"
}
5. Mint your NFT at:
https://livepeer.studio/mint-nft?tokenUri=ipfs://QmR2SaapDATg7q9vVG2NSaGbSE3KUBLfUN49Lb737HY88h

Note: The nftMetadataUrl is what you need to remember for custom minting of the NFT.

The equivalent command avoiding all the prompts would be:

$ export LP_API_KEY=<your API key obtained from the Livepeer dashboard>
$ npx @livepeer/video-nft nasa25.mp4 --asset-name "NASA 25th bday" --nft-metadata '{"description":"NASA's commemorative video for their 25th birthday"'

Mint your NFT!​

Livepeer provides pre-deployed ERC-721 contracts in the Polygon mainnet and testnet. If you are happy just using one of those, you can follow the link printed at the end of the video-nft CLI.

A minimal UI should show where all you have to do is connect your MetaMask wallet (currently the only supported one) and click the Mint NFT. button to get your NFT setup.

image

Note: If you are happy with the NFT minted on the page above, you can stop here!

Keep going if you are curious about how to create custom ERC-721 contracts or have your NFT minting app. You can reference the duplicate exported files
on IPFS for your custom NFTs, grabbed from the script output.

Install web3​

In this example, you will use Alchemy as the Eth service provider. It is assumed you have already deployed an ERC721 contract, which you can do so by following this How to Create an NFT guide.

  1. In your project home directory, run:
npm install @alch/alchemy-web3

  1. Create a mint-nft.js file**

  2. Inside your scripts directory, create a mint-nft.js file and add the following lines of code:

require('dotenv').config();
const API_URL = process.env.API_URL;
const { createAlchemyWeb3 } = require("@alch/alchemy-web3");
const web3 = createAlchemyWeb3(API_URL);
  1. Grab your contract ABI

The contract ABI (Application Binary Interface) is the interface to interact with our smart contract. Hardhat automatically generates an ABI for us and saves it in the MyNFT.json file. To use this, we'll need to parse out the contents by adding the following lines of code to our mint-nft.js file:

const contract = require("../artifacts/contracts/MyNFT.sol/MyNFT.json");

If you want to see the ABI, you can print it to your console:

console.log(JSON.stringify(contract.abi));

To run `mint-nft.js' and see your ABI printed to the console. Navigate to your terminal and run:

node scripts/mint-nft.js
  1. Create an instance of your contract
  • To interact with the contract, create an instance of it in the code. This requires the contract address which you can get from the deployment of Etherscan by looking up the address you used to deploy the contract.

For this example, our contract address is:

0xD6A8375E7A3BE7157f9bBD9D53348b39d75bEb3E

  1. Next, we will use the web3 contract method to create our contract using the ABI and address. In your mint-nft.js file, add the following:
const contractAddress = "0xD6A8375E7A3BE7157f9bBD9D53348b39d75bEb3E";
const nftContract = new web3.eth.Contract(contract.abi, contractAddress);
  1. Update the .env file

To create and send transactions to the Ethereum chain, use your public Ethereum account address to get the account nonce (explained below).

  1. Add your public key to your .env file —if you completed part 1 of the tutorial, our .env file should now look like this:
API_URL = "https://eth-ropsten.alchemyapi.io/v2/your-api-key"
PRIVATE_KEY = "your-private-account-address"
PUBLIC_KEY = "your-public-account-address"

Create your transaction​

Define a function called mintNFT(tokenData) and create the transaction by doing the following:

  1. Grab your PRIVATE_KEY and PUBLIC_KEY from the .env file.
  2. Next, we'll need to figure out the account nonce; the nonce specification to keep track of the number of transactions sent from your address— required for security purposes and to prevent replay attacks.
  3. To get the number of transactions sent from your address, use getTransactionCount.
  4. Finally, you can set up our transaction with the following info:
  5. "from ': PUBLIC_KEY: The origin of our transaction is our public address . "to ': contractAddress: The contract we wish to interact with and send the transaction
  6. "nonce': nonce`: The account nonce with the number of transactions sent from the address
  7. "gas': estimatedGas`: The estimated gas needed to complete the transaction
  8. "maxPriorityFeePerGas': estimatedFee`: The estimated fee to bid per gas.
  9. 'data': nftContract.methods.mintNFT(PUBLIC_KEY, tokenURI).encodeABI() : The computation to perform in this transaction— which in this case is minting an NFT

Your mint-nft.js file should look like this:

require("dotenv").config();
const API_URL = process.env.API_URL;
const PUBLIC_KEY = process.env.PUBLIC_KEY;
const PRIVATE_KEY = process.env.PRIVATE_KEY;

const { createAlchemyWeb3 } = require("@alch/alchemy-web3");
const web3 = createAlchemyWeb3(API_URL);

const contract = require("../artifacts/contracts/MyNFT.sol/MyNFT.json");
const contractAddress = "0xD6A8375E7A3BE7157f9bBD9D53348b39d75bEb3E";
const nftContract = new web3.eth.Contract(contract.abi, contractAddress);

async function mintNFT(tokenURI) {
  const nonce = await web3.eth.getTransactionCount(PUBLIC_KEY, "latest"); //get latest nonce

  //the transaction
  const tx = {
    from: PUBLIC_KEY,
    to: contractAddress,
    nonce: nonce,
    gas: 500000,
    maxPriorityFeePerGas: 2999999987,
    data: nftContract.methods.mintNFT(PUBLIC_KEY, tokenURI).encodeABI(),
  };
}
  1. Sign the transaction

Now that you have created the transaction, you will need to sign it to send it off. This is where you will use your private key:

web3.eth.sendSignedTransaction will provide the transaction hash, which you can use to ensure the transaction was mined and did not get dropped by the network. You may notice in the transaction signing section some error checking has been added to know if the transaction successfully went through.

require("dotenv").config();
const API_URL = process.env.API_URL;
const PUBLIC_KEY = process.env.PUBLIC_KEY;
const PRIVATE_KEY = process.env.PRIVATE_KEY;

const { createAlchemyWeb3 } = require("@alch/alchemy-web3");
const web3 = createAlchemyWeb3(API_URL);

const contract = require("../artifacts/contracts/MyNFT.sol/MyNFT.json");
const contractAddress = "0xD6A8375E7A3BE7157f9bBD9D53348b39d75bEb3E";
const nftContract = new web3.eth.Contract(contract.abi, contractAddress);

async function mintNFT(tokenURI) {
  const nonce = await web3.eth.getTransactionCount(PUBLIC_KEY, "latest"); //get latest nonce

  //the transaction
  const tx = {
    from: PUBLIC_KEY,
    to: contractAddress,
    nonce: nonce,
    gas: 500000,
    maxPriorityFeePerGas: 2999999987,
    data: nftContract.methods.mintNFT(PUBLIC_KEY, tokenURI).encodeABI(),
  };

  const signedTx = await web3.eth.accounts.signTransaction(tx, PRIVATE_KEY);
  const transactionReceipt = await web3.eth.sendSignedTransaction(
    signedTx.rawTransaction
  );

  console.log(`Transaction receipt: ${JSON.stringify(transactionReceipt)}`);
}
  1. Call mintNFT and run node scripts/mint-nft.js

Remember the nfcMetadataUrl from uploading your uploaded to Livepeer? Now it is time to use it to mint the NFT.

Altogether, the code should look like this:

require("dotenv").config();
const API_URL = process.env.API_URL;
const PUBLIC_KEY = process.env.PUBLIC_KEY;
const PRIVATE_KEY = process.env.PRIVATE_KEY;

const { createAlchemyWeb3 } = require("@alch/alchemy-web3");
const web3 = createAlchemyWeb3(API_URL);

const contract = require("../artifacts/contracts/MyNFT.sol/MyNFT.json");
const contractAddress = "0xD6A8375E7A3BE7157f9bBD9D53348b39d75bEb3E";
const nftContract = new web3.eth.Contract(contract.abi, contractAddress);

async function mintNFT(tokenURI) {
  const nonce = await web3.eth.getTransactionCount(PUBLIC_KEY, "latest"); //get latest nonce

  //the transaction
  const tx = {
    from: PUBLIC_KEY,
    to: contractAddress,
    nonce: nonce,
    gas: 500000,
    maxPriorityFeePerGas: 2999999987,
    data: nftContract.methods.mintNFT(PUBLIC_KEY, tokenURI).encodeABI(),
  };

  const signedTx = await web3.eth.accounts.signTransaction(tx, PRIVATE_KEY);
  const transactionReceipt = await web3.eth.sendSignedTransaction(
    signedTx.rawTransaction
  );

  console.log(`Transaction receipt: ${JSON.stringify(transactionReceipt)}`);
}

mintNFT("ipfs://QmTju7Q4iPbosYJfFvSdxcRkT4KPYCpem31Z6mGL979Kkg");
  1. Run node scripts/mint-nft.js to deploy your NFT. After a couple of seconds, you should see a response like this in your terminal:
The hash of your transaction is: 0x13edd7e9f1349ac7a92ed187686afd7c48e211f28ac1041b700d9691cc816455
Check Alchemy's Mempool to view the status of your transaction!

View the NFT​

Using the mint-nft.js, you can mint as many NFTs as you want! Just be sure to pass in a new tokenURI describing the NFT's metadata --otherwise, you will just end up making many identical NFTs with different IDs.

Now that you have minted your video NFT! You can take a look at the NFT:

  • on Etherscan through the contract address, or
  • on OpenSea at https://testnets.opensea.io/assets/{contract_address}/{id}