// https://ripe0x.notion.site/ripe0x/Builder-Components-info-595707954ee74d58afb4014ee904baf5
++ learn the basics here ++ learn the basics here
++ learn the basics here ++ learn the basics here
++ learn the basics here ++ learn the basics here

Getting started

We want to make it as easy as pos­si­ble for you to start your jour­ney in the Meta­verse. This is why we offer the BaseMes for free. Except for trans­ac­tion costs that are imposed by the net­work itself and that are only a few cents, your jour­ney starts absolute­ly free of any risks.

NFTs is the abbre­vi­a­tion for ‘non-fun­gi­ble tokens’. NFTs are unique (there­fore ‘non-fun­gi­ble’) dig­i­tal rep­re­sen­ta­tions of assets. Since they are based on immutable blockchains, as long as the respec­tive blockchain exists, the NFT will exist and can­not be altered. Don’t mis­take NFTs for JPEGs only. Rather, JPEGs are only the vis­i­ble out­er lay­er and the val­ue of the more suc­cess­ful NFTs lies in rep­re­sent­ing physcial objects or embody­ing access pass­es to real world events or spe­cial com­mu­ni­ties. Think of those NFTs as some sort of mem­ber­ship card or loy­al­ty pro­gram. But one that looks so cool that you glue it to your fore­head, or that you can trade on NFT mar­ket­places and make mon­ey with it. Accord­ing­ly, your MetaMe is not only a very cool look­ing avatar. This is just the out­er lay­er. Some stacks rep­re­sent real world ben­e­fits and that’s where it get’s inter­est­ing. In the end, there’s no ‘Right Click Save As’ to those ben­e­fits as they are immutably bound to the hold­ing of the respec­tive NFT.

Con­grat­u­la­tions! Once the NFT has been mint­ed, mean­ing that the acqui­si­tion has been approved by the net­work and it is reg­is­tered in the immutable record on the blockchain that you are the own­er of the NFT, the BaseMe can be viewed by a third par­ty appli­ca­tion. This can be the Meta­Mask app, if you used the Meta­Mask app to acquire the NFT (please note that the brows­er exten­sion does not sup­port view­ing the NFT at this time) or OpenSea once you con­nect your wal­let to it. We pro­vide more infor­ma­tion on OpenSea below.

You can com­pare the cryp­to wal­let to your phys­i­cal wal­let in your pock­et that holds your cash and cards. Cryp­to wal­lets are used to make trans­ac­tions on blockchains. Sim­i­lar­ly to tra­di­tion­al bank accounts, it allows you to send and receive your funds, whether Bit­coin, Ethereum or any oth­er of the many cur­ren­cies that exist. It can also receive and send NFTs. We don’t want to get into too much tech­ni­cal details here, but unlike tra­di­tion­al accounts, your funds are stored not in the wal­let direct­ly but on the blockchain only. Your wal­let func­tions like some sort of keys that can unlock those funds from the blockchain. Each wal­let comes with a pair of keys: a pub­lic and a pri­vate key. The pub­lic key sim­i­lar to the account num­ber or IBAN of your bank account. It can be shared with oth­er peo­ple as they need this num­ber to make trans­fers to you. Pri­vate keys on the oth­er hand should nev­er be shares with any­one. They allow access to your funds and can be com­pared to your online banking’s pass­wort.
As a broad dis­tinc­tion, there are paper wal­lets, hard­ware wal­lets and online wal­lets. Paper wal­lets are phys­i­cal print­outs con­tain­ing a pri­vate and pub­lic key. Har­ware wal­lets store the pri­vate and pub­lic keys in hard­ware don­gles that look sim­i­lar to USB sticks and are gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered to be a safe way of stor­ing your assets as they are only online when con­nect­ed to the com­put­er. Online wal­lets are most com­mon­ly used to inter­act with web­sites and the blockchain and car­ry out trans­ac­tions as they are the eas­i­est to use and most acces­si­ble. To inter­act with web­sites and blockchain appli­ca­tions, you don’t have to enter a user name and pass­word on the web­site any­more, rather, you self-host that infor­ma­tion and only con­nect your online wal­let to those web­sites and blockchain appli­ca­tions. The most com­mon online wal­let is Meta­Mask. To par­tic­i­pate in the MetaMeShop, we rec­om­mend you to use Meta­Mask.

Meta­Mask is the most pop­u­lar online wal­let with over twen­ty one mil­lion month­ly users in Novem­ber 2021. As an online wal­let, it allows you to inter­act with web­sites and blockchain appli­ca­tions. It is avail­able as brows­er exten­sions and mobile apps. You can find a FAQ here: https://metamask.io/faqs/. For the MetaMeShop, we rec­om­mend you to use a brows­er exten­sion as it is gen­er­al­ly eas­i­er to use.

For inter­act­ing with blockchain apps or to pur­chase NFTs, you will need to fund your online wal­let with the respec­tive cryp­to cur­ren­cy. For the MetaMeShop, you will need MATIC for the time being, which is the cur­ren­cy used on the Poly­gon Net­work. The rea­son that we chose the Poly­gon Net­work is that it allows for very low trans­ac­tion fees (we have cov­ered trans­ac­tion fees below).

First thing is con­nect­ing your Meta­Mask to the Poly­gon Net­work. The eas­i­est way is to vis­it www.polygonscan.com on your Desk­top com­put­er and to click on “Add Poly­gon Net­work” on the bot­tom of the page. You have to con­firm adding the net­work on your Meta­Mask.

For get­ting MATIC there are main­ly two dif­fer­ent ways. First, you can pur­chase MATIC with Fiat in Meta­Mask. This is the eas­i­est and most direct approach. How­ev­er, there may be some geo­graph­i­cal restric­tions based on your loca­tions. You can also pur­chase MATIC on an exchange and send it to your Meta­Mask wal­let. This is the most com­mon­ly used way. The most com­mon cen­tral­ized exchanges include Coin­base, Binance or Krak­en. Due to anti mon­ey laun­der­ing reg­u­la­tions you will have to com­plete an onboard­ing process for your iden­ti­ty ver­i­fi­ca­tion if you reg­is­ter an account there. Once you have pur­chased MATIC on your pre­ferred exchange, you need to send it to your Meta­Mask wal­let. Every exchange works dif­fer­ent­ly, so please make your­self famil­iar with your pre­ferred exchange.

Coin­base
Krak­en
Binance

Trans­ac­tion fees such as gas are fees that you pay to ini­ti­ate a trans­ac­tion on the blockchain. Trans­ac­tion fees are nec­es­sary because of the decen­tral­ized con­cept of the blockchain: There is no cen­tral author­i­ty such as a bank that owns servers on which trans­ac­tions are exe­cut­ed and that pays for the oper­a­tion of the servers (the mon­ey for which, of course, in the end comes from their cus­tomers). Rather, every­one that ini­ti­ates a trans­ac­tion on the blockchain pays the decen­tral­ized min­ers a trans­ac­tion fee to reward the val­i­da­tion of the blockchain as they need to car­ry out a num­ber of activ­i­ties to ensure that the net­work func­tions cor­rect­ly. In gen­er­al, those activ­i­ties can be dis­tin­guished in proof of work or proof of stake con­cepts (or a com­bi­na­tion there­of), which we won’t dive into now. 

The more com­plex trans­ac­tions are, the high­er the trans­ac­tions fees are as the activ­i­ties to be car­ried out by the min­ers are more dif­fi­cult and require more effort. Because gas fees on the Ethereum net­work are crazy high — mint­ing of an NFT could eas­i­ly cost you $120 in gas fees only — we decid­ed to build the MetaMeShop on the Poly­gon net­work. Due to improve­ments in the effi­cien­cy, the same trans­ac­tion only trig­gers trans­ac­tion fees in the amount of a cou­ple cents.
OpenSea is the largest NFT mar­ket­place on the Ethereum blockchain, which has been backed by some of the most promi­nent inve­stores in the world such as the ven­ture cap­i­tal fund Andreessen Horowitz. OpenSea is the go-to place to buy and sell NFTs. It inte­grates seam­less­ly with Meta­Mask. Since you can buy NFTs direct­ly in the MetaMeShop, OpenSea is rel­e­vant for sec­ondary sales, for instance when lim­it­ed traits are sold out.
A lot of NFT projects don’t think too much about the IP, although this ques­tion is extreme­ly impor­tant and should be tak­en into account when decid­ing to invest in a NFT project. The ques­tion is: What can you do with the art that is asso­ci­at­ed with an NFT after you pur­chased the NFT? With the MetaMeShop, we have decid­ed to give you a very broad IP license. This means that if you buy a NFT that has been cre­at­ed by us, we give you a full-fledged per­son­al and uncapped com­mer­cial IP license. This means that you can use the art not only for per­son­al use but also make unlim­it­ed mon­ey with it for instance by cre­at­ing your own mer­chan­dise or deriv­a­tive NFT projects — all with­out pay­ing us any roy­al­ty for this com­mer­cial use.

Since NFTs on blockchains are decen­tral­ized, the files asso­ci­at­ed with the NFTs should be store decen­tral­ized as well, no? We also think so, how­ev­er, a lot of NFT projects don’t take this into con­sid­er­a­tion and store the files on their local serv­er, cre­at­ing the risk that the files are changed after you pur­chased the NFT. The MetaMeShop stores all files asso­ci­at­ed with the NFTs in a decen­tral­ized way using the Inter­Plan­e­tary File Sys­tem (IPFS). You can find more infor­ma­tion on the IFPS under www.ifps.io.

NFT lingo

Ape­ing means invest­ing in a project.

Alpha derives from the hedge fund com­mu­ni­ty and means out­per­for­mance of insid­ers. In respect of NFT projects it refers to ear­ly and smart infor­ma­tion on a project. For instance, you could tell your friends about some infor­ma­tion on the MetaMeShop as fol­lows: “Here’s some alpha for you, there’s an upcom­ing air­drop in the MetaMeShop that has not been dis­closed yet, might be smart, to buy a Gen­e­sis Pack now.”

Bull­ish means hav­ing con­fi­dence that a project will be a suc­cess.
Cope The oppo­site of FOMO. Fail­ing to buy an NFT because one is cop­ing with one’s ear­li­er error of not FOMO­ing at 1/10th the price. “I know Gold­en Snails are up 50x and head­ing to Christie’s, but I did­n’t like the launch so stay­ing out” “OK, LOL, cope”.
DAO means decen­tral­ized autonomous orga­ni­za­tion. Some NFT projects allow the col­lec­tive of NFT own­ers to vote on the future direc­tion of the project, such as the dis­tri­b­u­tion of prof­its.
Degen means Degen­er­ate, the self-giv­en iden­ti­ty of the NFT com­mu­ni­ty.
Dia­mond Hands means Hodling, i.e. that a NFT hold­er does not sell the NFT despite vol­un­tary mar­kets; the oppo­site is Paper Hands.
Doxxed Team means that the founders’ real iden­ti­ty has been revealed.
Dutch Auc­tion refers to an auc­tion of NFTs where the start­ing prices are high and get low­ered over time. This is usu­al­ly done to pre­vent gas wars.
DYOR means ‘Do Your Own Research’.
Flip­ping means buy­ing an NFT at the mint event or on a sec­ondary mar­ket for a low price and reselling it quick­ly to real­ize a prof­it.
Floor Price refers to the low­est avail­able ask­ing price on any sec­ondary NFT mar­ket­place such as OpenSea for a col­lec­tion or a sub­set of the col­lec­tion. For instance, the Floor Price for the MetaMe Gen­e­sis Pack might be 3 WETH but for the ultra rare Packs 20 WETH.
FOMO means ‘Fear of Miss­ing Out’.
FUD refers to ‘Fear, Uncer­tain­ty & Doubt’.
Gas War refers to a crazy surge in gas prices because a lot of par­tic­i­pants try to get trans­ac­tions con­firmed with­in a small win­dow of time, which encour­ages users to set their gas prices high­er to incen­tivize the min­ers to con­firm their trans­ac­tion with pri­or­i­ty, there­by rais­ing the required trans­ac­tion fees beyond nor­mal; gas wars some­times hap­pen if there is a hyped NFT mint and it is not unlike­ly to pay USD 300 only for the mint­ing of a NFT. To pre­vent gas wars with crazy fees, the MetaMeShop is based on the Poly­gon net­work with extreme­ly low trans­ac­tion fees, even if there is a gas war.
GM means ‘Good Morn­ing’, which is a friend­ly and very com­mon­ly used greet­ing with­in the NFT com­mu­ni­ty.
GMI means ‘Gonna (finan­cial­ly) Make It’; the oppo­site is NGMI.
GN means ‘Good Night‘, which is very com­mon­ly used in the NFT com­mu­ni­ty once you trans­fer to the real life.
HODL means ‘Hold on for dear life’ that can also be traced back to a typo in ‘Hold’ and is some­thing that Paper Hands do.
How WL? is a com­mon ques­tion asked in Dis­cords and refers to how to get on the whitelist or the pre­sale to get access to mint­ing an NFT before its gen­er­al pub­lic release. At the MetaMeShop we believe in a democ­ra­tized approach and do not plan to uti­lize whitelists unless it is nec­es­sary for the func­tion­al­i­ty of the mint.
IRL means ‘In Real Life’, the world beyond Twit­ter, Dis­cord and OpenSea. You can acquire stacks in the MetaMeShop that offer ben­e­fits IRL, such as dis­counts at your favorite retail­er or access to spe­cial events.
IYKYK means ‘If you know you know’.
JPGs refers to NFTs (which, to admit, might be JPGs or GIFs) in an insult­ing way as peo­ple out­side of the NFT com­mu­ni­ty often times don’t under­stand that the pic­ture file in suc­cess­ful NFT projects is just the out­er lay­er and there­fore say­ing things like “how can you spend mon­ey on just JPGs”. In the MetaMeShop, NFTs come with spe­cial ben­e­fits, that go way beyond a JPG and that can­not be ‘Right Clicked and Saved As’.
LFG means ‘Let’s F*ckin Go!’ and is typ­i­cal­ly used when you are hyped for a project to suc­ceed.
Looks Rare is used iron­i­cal­ly and refers to the rar­i­ty of NFTs which is often a dri­ver of val­ue and prices. Uniron­i­cal­ly, some traits in the MetaMeShop look crazy rare, don’t they?
McDon­ald’s is the NFT Community’s back­up career plan in case of the NGMI sce­nario.
Mint refers to the act of pub­lish­ing the NFT on the blockchain.
NGMI means ‘Not Gonna Make It’, in which sce­nario, we will apply to McDonald’s.
NFA means ‘Not Finan­cial Advice’, and is some­thing our lawyer rec­om­mend­ed us to tell you.
OG orig­i­nates from the 1990s hiphop cul­ture and means ‘Orig­i­nal Gang­ster’, refer­ring to peo­ple who have been involved in the NFT com­mu­ni­ty since the ear­ly days.
Paper Hands means that a NFT hold­er sells the NFT very ear­ly, for instance to flip the NFT or because of vol­un­tary mar­kets; the oppo­site is Dia­mond Hands.
PFP Project refers to a NFT projects focused around pro­vid­ing an avatar in the meta­verse – and, before this exists, a pro­file pic­ture for use on social media plat­forms such as Twit­ter, Insta­gram and Dis­cord.
Prob­a­bly Noth­ing is iron­i­cal­ly stat­ing that there is “prob­a­bly some­thing” behind NFTs.
POAP means ‘Proof Of Atten­dance Pro­to­col’, which enables a dig­i­tal token that proves you attend­ed an event. Can you imag­ine your MetaMe get­ting a new stack once you fin­ished the online uni­ver­si­ty class?
Right Click Save As refers to peo­ple out­side the NFT com­mu­ni­ty think­ing that down­load­ing an image from a web brows­er means that NFTs are obso­lete, not real­iz­ing that it is not about the JPG but in fact about what comes with the true own­er­ship of the asso­ci­at­ed NFT such as dis­counts or events.
Rug Pull refers to fraud or scam, when a NFT project receives funds but the team dis­ap­pears and does not pro­vide the promised NFTs. As in the MetaMeShop you start with the free mint of the BaseMe, there is no rug we could (the­o­ret­i­cal­ly) pull.
Sweep­ing the Floor refers to the act of pur­chas­ing NFTs on the sec­ondary mar­ket at the low­est prices.
To The Moon is typ­i­cal­ly used when you are hyped for a project and want its val­ue to rock­et to the moon.
WAGMI means ‘We’re All Gonna (finan­cial­ly) Make It’, so we don’t have to McDonald’s; oppo­site is NGMI.
Whales refers to high net (cryp­to) wealth indi­vid­u­als who are able to pur­chase large amounts of NFTs or cryp­tocur­ren­cy in one go and there­fore can influ­ence the val­u­a­tion.
Wen Lam­bo? or When Lam­bo? Is typ­i­cal­ly used when you are hyped for a project and already ask when you can buy a Lam­borgh­i­ni with the prof­its. As a Dia­mond Hand, this, how­ev­er, is not a ques­tion.
if ( ! is_page( array( 'Legal', 'legal' ) ) ) return;