FTX Implements Fees for Minting NFTs to Reduce Spam

FTX, a global cryptocurrency exchange, unveiled its new NFT minting feature earlier this morning. The exchange’s founder Sam Bankman-Fried announced the new service in a series of tweets on 6 September, saying that users of the exchange will be able to create their own NFTs on the platform for free. 

Bankman-Fried noted that all of the NFTs minted on FTX will be cross-chain and can be traded across the Ethereum and Solana blockchain networks. While users can currently store and view the NFTs only within the exchange, the FTX marketplace will expand to support deposits and withdrawals in the next few weeks.

While the minting process itself is free, FTX charges a 5% fee to the buyer and to the seller with each sale. This, however, hasn’t stopped users from spamming the platform with thousands of NFTs representing fish. 

In response to the huge demand and the resulting spam, Bankman-Fried said the company instated a one-time fee of $500 for minting NFTs. 

“Due to the massive number of submissions, too many of which were just a picture of a fish, we are now charging a one-time $500 fee to submit NFTs,” he wrote on Twitter. “Hopefully this will reduce spam.”

FTX’s newly instated fee was quickly met with backlash, with Bankman-Fried returning to Twitter to say the exchange was working on a pricing system that reduces spam but keeps the minting process cheaper than on other blockchains.

In a third attempt to reduce the spam on the platform, FTX will not charge a flat fee of $10 per NFT. All of the $500 fees that were paid so far will be refunded and the new setup will have no upfront costs, Bankman-Fried said.