gm.

I am using evergreen Friday to explore one of those *other* chains for a change.

the future is multi-chain…so that means my NFTs must be multichain too. I currently have ones on Ethereum, Solana, and Tezos, but that wasn’t enough. I needed *more*.

my airdrops often come from Polygon…but I don’t count those. it did get me thinking about L2 NFTs though, as I had never gone through the effort of setting up a Layer 2 on Metamask.

that was until a few weeks ago…

why Arbitrum? ⚓️

truthfully, I bought an Arbitrum NFT because I *thought* I had an interview for a marketing position with them.

(I ended up being interviewed for a completely *different* position in one of the most confusing business experiences of my life, but that’s a story for another day).

and conveniently a few days before my interview, OpenSea added Arbitrum NFTs to their marketplace too, which made my deep dive (and buying them) that much easier.

Arbitrum is a popular L2 that uses “roll-ups” to reduce gas costs and congestion on mainnet ETH…and for that reason, your eyes may have already glazed over.

but hear me out. the effectiveness of roll-ups *could* be the future of NFTs.

no one wants to spend ten dollars…let alone hundreds or thousands…on gas fees. that’s what has made Solana NFTs so popular despite the network intermittently just going down (as it did again this week).

gas is…whether you’d like to believe it or not…one of the biggest inhibitors to onboarding new people to the space. creating a wallet is complicated enough, but when you need *extra* dough on top of the ETH you already have in there? that’s when it starts to get confusing.

“gas also changes by the second? what is going on here?”

that’s where L2s come in.

how to buy Arbitrum NFTs ⚓️

in order to buy an Arbitrum NFT, you’ll first have to do some swapping. using the Arbitrum Bridge was once the first of *many* steps in order to get one.

(you often had to then convert to a coin like $MAGIC on Uniswap or Sushiswap in order if you wanted to buy a SmolBrains, for example).

however, as mentioned, Arbitrum NFTs have been added to OpenSea now, so you can keep everything in ETH after it’s converted on the bridge.

next, you’ll just have to add Arbitrum to your Metamask wallet. to do that, simply ‘add network’ and input the criteria below (or OpenSea can even do this for you).

Network Name: Arbitrum

New RPC URL: https://arb1.arbitrum.io/rpc 

Chain ID: 42161

Currency Symbol: ETH

Block Explorer URL: https://arbiscan.io/

from there, you’ll go back to your Ethereum Mainnet wallet and open up the bridge. convert the total ETH you want in Arbitrum. the bridge transaction requires 2 signatures and took me about 10 minutes in total.

not exactly lightning fast, but once it’s there, you just have to then switch back to the Arbitrum network in Metamask…and you’re ready to hit OpenSea.

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conclusion? ⚓️

I ended up buying two ‘Government Toucans’ (see above) mostly because they were cheap and your boy loves toucans.

(this is a tangent but I once made it my goal to see one in Costa Rica. I dragged my family up to nature preserves and national parks searching for one with no luck. it wasn’t until I was at some random restaurant on my final night that I saw the big beaked bird. it was up in a nearby tree cracking a nut with its schnoz. what a time that was.)

if *smooth* is what we want then we’re still a far way from L2 NFTs. the transaction was quick, but getting the proper funds to buy them on OpenSea was a mild headache that required at least some base knowledge of blockchain bridges. that’s not exactly someone off the street will understand right away.

but if we want a transaction that’s fast and doesn’t cost much gas? now we’re talking. the Government Toucans cost me a few cents in gas…practically “free”.

for that reason, Arbitrum makes sense for gaming NFTs…with all their microtransactions and lots of other activity in order to keep costs down.

that being said, even for standard NFTs, Arbitrum is still better off than many other L2s right now. its quality of projects…in particular, SmolBrains (the dynamic NFTs that have growing head sizes based on the tokens “IQ”)…keep it a cut above.

Optimism and Polygon NFTs can’t exactly say the same right now…as nothing there (that I know) has a big diehard following as SmolBrains.

(if this series of me exploring other chains’ NFTs continues, perhaps I can dive into Optimism NFTs to see if there is one I’m missing).

but truthfully if there is a next edition of “Biv explores chains,” it’s going to be diving into one of the craziest fanbases of them all…Cardano NFTs 👀