getting early access to an NFT
guarantee mint and discounted mint price (most of the time)

Whitelist, a list of names and wallet addresses collected, allows certain members to be guaranteed a spot for minting a new NFT collection. Whitelist ensures the person can mint an NFT during the official drop without worrying about gas wars and the NFTs from selling out.

Usually, these whitelist spots are to reward the early loyal supporters of the NFT project. 0n1 force was the first to popularize this whitelist concept in the NFT space in August 2021. They had called this list "Nameless". Every NFT project calls it differently, and for example, names could be "allowlist" or "mintlist" or "mint pass". However, some recent NFT projects can't guarantee access to minting an NFT, even if you have been whitelisted because the number of whitelist spots exceeds the NFTs.

The whitelist mint price is usually lower than the public mint price. As a result, some flippers would like to get on the whitelist to maximize their profits on the secondary markets.

How can I be Whitelisted?

Nowadays, to get on a whitelist, each NFT projects have their own requirements, for example:

be active and engaged in the community discord until you get to a certain level (leveling up)
Invite competitions to the project’s Discord channel
following the project's social media and tweeting, commenting, quoting to win a whitelist raffle
participate in twitch or random fun discord games hosted by project founders & moderators and win a whitelist spot
other contests such as creating fan-made derivative art / memes or in real-life contribution
if you own a certain bluechip or partner NFT, you might automatically get a whitelist spot
get the whitelist from the project's partners (The partners are may either raffle these whitelist spots as benefits to their community or sell them to their community through a whitelist market)

All the things above are known as grinding except for number 6. In the past, doing one or more of these five things would be able to secure yourself a whitelist spot. However, this is not the case nowadays. Additionally, some NFT projects have vague and ambiguous whitelist criteria, hence causing even more engagement. Resulting in some people hiring freelancers to help grind for these whitelists.

Another Note on Grinding

The desire to get on the whitelist is why some grinders stay up all night to engage with the project's Discord server; some never seem to leave the discord server in the fear that they will miss something crucial or surprise announcements. As it gets closer to the mint date, some people lose hope of getting a WL spot, and this causes frustration and negativity. The community usually tries to encourage them, but when there are thousands of people going for the limited whitelist spots, no matter how much one grinds, there are always the unlucky ones that are unable to get a WL spot.

Alpha Groups

Small or large alpha groups may be offered whitelists to a new NFT project, and these are raffled or given to their group members as benefits. In addition, sometimes, the alpha group leaders will help analyze the new NFT project's potential and legitimacy and co-host AMA to talk about these new projects.

Whitelist Market (No more grinding)

Whitelist Markets began to pop up in Q1 2022, selling whitelist spots using specific tokens. For example: "HeadDAO" & "Habbiz" & "CryptoZombiez" & "Satoshi Runners" & "Neo Tokyo" have their whitelist market. There is a Famous Fox Federation whitelist token marketplace on the Solana network, where you can use SOL to buy or sell whitelist tokens. (many of these tokens on Solana are fake, so do diligent research before purchasing)

Satoshi Runners Whitelist Marketplace

Public Mint & Secondary Marketplace

If you missed the whitelist mint, there is always the public mint, usually a higher price, and usually 24 hours later (sometimes shorter than 60 minutes), which might sell out quickly. Higher demand NFT collections tend to use a public dutch mint that begins before the whitelist mints. The public dutch mint starts at a higher price and slowly decreases over time until the NFT mints out.

On the Ethereum and polygon network, usually after mint, the NFTs will be viewable almost instantly and attainable on secondary markets such as "Opensea" & "LooksRare" & "Rarible". For Solana markets, "SolSea" & "Magic Eden", the collection will appear a few hours after the collection has been fully minted.

My Final Thoughts

Whitelisting mechanics are ever-changing as the NFT market moves quickly. So have fun out there, do find some good mints that vibe with you.

In the following few articles, I will share how to avoid NFT scams and my personal experience as a degen NFT investor & HODLer.

Cheers, Eric F

If you want to get in touch about interesting NFT ideas or projects or want to hear about a specific topic, I'm @ericclfung on Twitter.

Thanks to @Wako & @Brioche & @obesfosho for reviewing this post.

Disclaimer: I am just an NFT dreamer who has some success in this crypto and NFT space. The above does not constitute an offer or solicitation to offer or recommend any investment product.

https://twitter.com/EricCLFung/status/1511527363640582145?s=20&t=ez-fBQ6WwdxwQv6aiWxWLA