How to use Topaz NFT Marketplace with Pontem Wallet

Pontem is the first Aptos wallet to integrate Topaz natively: you can trade NFTs right in the wallet! In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to do it, and how to trade NFTs on Topaz the regular way using Pontem Wallet.

What is Topaz?

Topaz is the biggest NFT marketplace on the Aptos blockchain by trading volume as of November 2022. Here you’ll find all the major Aptos NFT collections: Bruh Bears, AptoPunks, Aptos Monkeys, Toad Overload, etc.

Topaz has hosted the mints of some of the highest-profile NFT projects on Aptos, such as our own Pontem Space Pirates, Aptomingos, and others. These mints are notoriously difficult to join unless you have a whitelist spot, though. For example, our whitelist-only Pontem Space Pirates were minted out in a few seconds!

Topaz does not have a dedicated Launchpad section, though you can get an idea of what’s coming from the Drops page. For this reason, this tutorial will cover the process of buying and selling NFTs from listed collections. Once more publicly available (non-whitelist) mints appear on the platform, we will add a section about how to mint NFTs on Topaz. For now, you can find many affordable mints with public allocations on Souffl3, another great marketplace that supports Pontem Wallet.

What is Pontem Wallet?

Pontem is the first production-ready wallet for Aptos. It was developed by Pontem Network, the same blockchain product studio that created Liquidswap, one of the most popular DEX exchanges on Aptos. Pontem Wallet has over 100,000 downloads and has just released a mobile app for iOS.

Pontem already works with 30+ Aptos dApps. But the most interesting thing about it is native integrations: instead of connecting the wallet to a dApp, you can perform various transactions right within the wallet interface. The first native integration we’ve added is Topaz, but more are on the way, including token swaps, yield farming, liquid staking, and more.

If you don’t have Pontem Wallet yet, install it as a Chrome extension here. You can create a new wallet or import an existing one using a secret phrase (mnemonic). It doesn’t have to be a Pontem Wallet, by the way; you can also import an account originally created with Petra, Martian, Fewcha, or another Aptos wallet.

If it’s your first time using an Aptos wallet, you’ll need to get some APT first. There are two ways to do it:

1. Buy APT on a centralized exchange like Binance or KuCoin and withdraw them to Pontem Wallet.
2. Bridge USDT or USDC using the LayerZero bridge on Liquidswap and then swap them for APT on Liquidswap. Make sure to read our bridging tutorial first, though!

Check out the FAQ for more info on both options.

Buy an NFT with the native Topaz native integration in Pontem Wallet

With this new exciting feature, you can browse popular collections and buy NFTs in the wallet. The wallet doesn’t even have to be connected to the Topaz dApp on the website. The integration supports the following features:

• Viewing the 20 largest collections, together with thire 24 hour sales volume and the percentage volume change;
• Browsing listings for the 20 largest collections;
• Viewing each NFT’s properties and owner address;
• Purchases.

In the future, we plan to support even more of Topaz’s functionality in-wallet.

Start by clicking on the dApp Directory icon in the wallet’s menu.

You’ll see a list of Pontem’s verified partners. There are many more dApps that support Pontem Wallet, but these ones are fully audited and passed our due diligence.

Apart from Liquidswap and Topaz, there are liquid staking dApps Tortuga Finance and Ditto, Souffl3 NFT marketplace, the lending protocol Argo, KanaLabs DeFi super app, trading and swapping apps (Tsunami Finance, Hippo, and OmniBTC), and IDO launchpads (Aptos Launcher, AptosLaunch, and Proton), as well as a link to an extensive link of Aptos projects on dAppSea.

Сlick on Topaz to open the list of trending collections.

Another way to access the collections is to go to the Collectibles section and click Topaz Top 5.

If you don’t have much experience trading NFTs, it’s better to start with something more affordable, such as an AptoPunk, which you can buy for less than 1 APT. For floor prices, check out the main Topaz page.

Click on AptoPunks to open a list of offers and wait for the images to load (it can take 10-20 seconds). The listings are sorted from least to most expensive.

Click on a listing to view its details: the owner’s address and the properties, such as background, eyes, accessories, and so on.

If you want to find an NFT with uncommon properties, you’ll need to check the Topaz website to see the rarity of each trait.  For example, checking Punk #4748 (around the floor price at 0.76 APT)  on Topaz, we find that only 1.02% of AptoPunks have the same beard (in fact, most Punks are beardless). Also, an eyemask is pretty rare at 1.72%. So it’s not a bad buy.

In Pontem Wallet, click on Buy Now.

The gas fee is really low, as you can see: less than 0.005 APT, or around $0.035 - a huge difference compared to trading NFTs on Ethereum.

Confirm the transaction. In a few seconds, the Punk should appear in the Collectibles section of Pontem Wallet.

You can click on an NFT to view the collection name and creator address.

Note: to buy NFTs from collections that aren’t in the top 20, you’ll need to connect Pontem Wallet to the Topaz marketplace and browse its Explore sections, just like on any other NFT marketplace. We plan to add in-wallet support for more collections in the future.

How to list an NFT for sale on Topaz with Pontem Wallet

As you can’t sell NFTs directly in Pontem Wallet yet, start by connecting the wallet on the main marketplace page.

Once connected, navigate to the Profile section. There you’ll find all the NFTs held in your Pontem Wallet.

Let’s list our newly-purchased Punk. Hover over it to view additional options: Details, List Now, and Sell Instantly.

If you select Sell Instantly, you’ll get less than the current floor price (in this case, 0.57 APT as opposed to the 0.75 APT floor). So use it only if you need money urgently - or if you think that the floor price is going to collapse for some reason and you want to get rid of a collectible before it happens.

We will use List Now instead. Let’s say we hope to get 0.9 APT for the Punk eventually (and we are prepared to wait).

Click on List Now and confirm in Pontem Wallet. This transaction is subject to a small gas fee.

Click Confirm and wait a few seconds. The NFT will appear in the Listings section on your Topaz profile. You can hover over it to view additional options: Details, Edit Price, and Delist.

Also, if you now check the Collectibles tab in Pontem Wallet, you’ll see that the NFT is gone. This is normal: listed NFTs aren’t displayed in wallets, because they are deposited in the marketplace smart contract.

If you don’t want to sell an NFT anymore, click on Delist and confirm in the wallet. Note that delisting and changing the price are also subject to gas fees.

How to buy an NFT on Topaz with Pontem the Regular Way

If you are new to Aptos NFTs, we recommend that you focus on the 20 biggest collections by volume. This way, if you decide to sell, it will be easier to do so because the collection is highly liquid (i.e. there are numerous buyers and sellers in the market). When buying an NFT from a less popular collection, you risk not being able to find a buyer later on.

If you decide to buy an item from a less popular collection, check its Twitter and Discord first. Some list their socials in their short description on Topaz, like in this example of Secret Owl Society. For others, you’ll have to look up the socials yourself ifTopaz doesn’t list them by default.

Try to find an item with a couple of rare features around the floor price by hovering over each one and clicking on Details. Note that you can also view an item’s rank - the lower the number, the better.

For some collections, Topaz even lets you search for NFTs with a specific trait. It's a handy feature if you want to find out how much your own collectible is worth: you can check the listed prices for similar ones.

For some collections, rarity stats  aren’t available, and there are collections for which Topaz doesn’t list properties altogether. In these cases, you can try to browse a project’s Discord for more information on traits and rarities. Hopefully in the future, Aptos will have specified services for calculating NFT rarities, similar to HowRare on Solana.

Experienced NFT traders sometimes prefer to pay much more for a really rare NFT, but for beginners, shopping near the floor price is safer. Nevertheless, a higher rarity rank doesn’t always mean a higher price. People often don’t know how rare their collectibles are, so they just list them around the floor price. In this example, an item with a high rank of 115 was priced lower than Owls ranked in the 500’s and 600’s.

Click on Buy Now and confirm the transaction (and the gas fee) in the wallet. That’s it! In a few seconds you should see the item in the Collectibles section.

Stay safe on Aptos NFT marketplaces

The NFT space is known for ‘rugs’ - situations where the founders either disappear with the money after the mint or just slowly abandon the project. There are also full-blown NFT scams, where users are lured in with the promise of a free mint or an NFT airdrop, only to see their wallets drained after they confirm a malicious transaction.

To protect your APT and NFT holdings, follow these simple rules:

1. Don’t trust ‘free mints’ promoted by unknown users on Discord and Twitter,  especially if they promise to distribute thousands of NFTs.
2. Remember that admin accounts can get hacked, too. Just because an admin in Discord is shilling an airdrop doesn’t mean it’s real. Trust your gut.
3. Don’t connect your Aptos wallet to random sites and dApps.
4. Never, ever give anyone your seed phrase.
5. Minting is much safer on a marketplace like Topaz or Souffl3 than on an external site. The collection can still turn out to be a rug, but at least your wallet won’t get drained.
6. If you do decide to mint on an external site, read the transaction data carefully before confirming it. Fake sites transfer NFTs or funds from the wallet owner’s address to another address, while a legitimate mint does the opposite: transfers an NFT into your address.
7. Always check that the URL of a site/app is correct. Phishers often create fake sites that have an identical design and with almost the same URL.
8. Before minting, check out the project’s Discord and Twitter. Is the community sufficiently large (several times larger than the number of NFTs in the collection)? Does the team actively communicate with the users? Is there a palpable air of excitement about the mint?
9. Don’t invest any money you can’t afford to lose. Go into every mint prepared for the price of your NFT to go to zero.

There is a lot of enthusiasm around NFTs on Aptos, but it doesn’t mean that every project will succeed. Even if you really like the art, make sure to DYOR (do your own research) first. And of course, follow Pontem on Twitter, Discord, and Telegram for more tutorials and analysis of Aptos dApps.

About Pontem

Pontem Network is a product studio building for Aptos and the wider Move ecosystem. We work in close collaboration with the Aptos Foundation to deliver secure audited dApps, such as Pontem Wallet and the Liquidswap DEX. We also offer groundbreaking tools for coders, including ByteBabel (the first EVM implementation for Aptos) and Move Code Playground, the first browser code editor for Move.