Minting and offers

Minting makes a new NFT. You send one transaction. The NFT appears on a page in your account.

Minting is the only moment to choose the NFT's permanent settings. Can it be transferred? Can the issuer burn it? Is there a transfer fee? These are sealed into the NFT's ID.

Selling works with offers. An offer is a note on the ledger that says "I will sell this NFT for this much" or "I will buy that NFT for this much."

Offers do not match by themselves. This is different from the token exchange, where matching orders trade at once. With NFTs, a person has to pick one offer and accept it.

• The owner posts a sell offer. A buyer accepts it. The NFT and the payment swap in one step.
• Anyone posts a buy offer on an NFT they want. The owner accepts it, or ignores it.

A sell offer can name one account as the only allowed buyer. A sell offer for 0 XRP is a gift. The receiver still has to accept it.

Each open offer locks 0.2 XRP for whoever placed it. Cancel the offer, or have it accepted, and the XRP unlocks.

Since 2025, a creator can mint and list in a single transaction.

Mint. NFTokenMint takes:

• NFTokenTaxon (required): the series number. Use 0 for no collection.
• Flags: tfBurnable, tfOnlyXRP, tfTransferable, tfMutable.
• TransferFee: optional, needs tfTransferable.
• URI: optional, up to 256 bytes.
• Issuer: only when an authorized minter mints for another account.

The transaction fails with tecINSUFFICIENT_RESERVE if a new page is needed and the owner cannot cover it.

Mint with an offer. The NFTokenMintOffer amendment, enabled on 2025-02-15, added three optional fields to NFTokenMint: Amount, Expiration and Destination. With Amount set, the mint also creates a sell offer for the new NFT. Expiration and Destination are errors without Amount.

Offers. NFTokenCreateOffer creates an NFTokenOffer entry.

• Sell offer: set the tfSellNFToken flag (value 1). Only the current owner can do this. Owner must be omitted.
• Buy offer: no flag. Owner is required and must not be the sender. Amount must be more than zero.
• Optional Expiration, in seconds since the Ripple Epoch.
• Optional Destination: the only account allowed to accept.

Offers are kept in two directories per NFT, one for buys and one for sells. Read them with nft_buy_offers and nft_sell_offers.

Accept. NFTokenAcceptOffer with NFTokenSellOffer or NFTokenBuyOffer completes a direct sale. The NFT moves from the seller's page to the buyer's page. Funds move from buyer to seller. If the NFT has a transfer fee, the issuer receives that percentage.

Cancel. NFTokenCancelOffer lists offer IDs in NFTokenOffers. It can be sent by the offer's creator, by the account in its Destination, or by anyone once the offer has expired. Offers from a past owner can stay on the ledger after the NFT moves.

Burn. NFTokenBurn destroys an NFT. The holder can always burn. The issuer can burn it from any holder only if it was minted with tfBurnable.

Related: Transfer fees and flags.