Battling Bots: Why You Should Allowlist Your Free Mint

You decide that you're going to offer your loyal base a free mint.

Wow, you're feeling like a real Robinhood! A digital artist that truly creates for genuine fans of art and technology.

As launch day approaches, you scroll through your checklist, making sure everything is ready:

• The art is incredible... Check ✅
• You have a community raving about your art... Check ✅✅
• Every aspect of the project is good to go... Check ✅✅✅

You're feeling confident as hell and know that your community will flock to Twitter to praise your collection. The project you worked so hard on is bound to be a massive success for your team and potential collectors.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, it's mint day, and your collection goes live. Things seem fine, great even! You and your team can't believe your eyes because the collection minted out in a matter of minutes.

But while this seems incredible, you start receiving a barrage of angry messages in your Discord chat. The community is furious, and it's all because of one thing:

Minting bots = fake collectors

Without even realizing it, bots infiltrated your minting experience and snatched up all the tokens without giving your real community a chance to claim their own.

Collection RUINED!!!

Okay, so I am just sort of kidding. But this is not too far-fetched of an exaggeration.

Storytelling and fictitious scenarios aside, bots can wreak havoc on minting experiences. Every artist and NFT creator should be aware of them and have a plan to prevent bots from ruining a collection.

Here we will discuss one specific way of preventing bots from hoarding all your art during your mint: allowlists.

Before we dive into that, here's a little more on bots.

What are bots, and why are they bad for digital creators?

In the digital collectibles space, "bots" usually refer to software programs designed to collect as many NFTs as possible during a mint. While human users can only mint one NFT at a time, bots can carry out consecutive mints.

Here's where the problems start to come in.

Bots can be detrimental to Non-Fungible Tokens because they can quickly manipulate the markets by buying or selling large amounts of NFTs to drive prices up or down. This kind of market manipulation can distort prices, leading to an inaccurate reflection of the value of an art piece.

People can also design bots to acquire scarce NFTs for personal gain, taking them out of circulation and preventing others from buying them. This bot-hoarding technique deprives the market of liquidity and can make it difficult for other collectors to acquire the art.

While all blockchains have bots, they are not the same across all blockchains!

Depending on where you decide to launch your project, bots could present a more significant problem on specific blockchains than others.

Solana is an excellent example of the different nature of NFT minting bots. Since Solana has low gas prices and high transactions per second, bots have the potential to seriously disrupt a minting experience. But while bots are a potential problem to digital art drops across all blockchains, we're here to tell you there is something you can do to prevent them from ruining your project launch.

Use allowlists on your free mints

There are many strategies to deal with bots, but our top recommendation is creating allowlists for your free mint. That's because they provide a secure and reliable way to ensure that only trustworthy collectors from your community can participate.

If you're still wondering what allowlists are, they are a form of authentication used to manage who can participate in a minting experience. They provide a layer of security for digital collectibles and help ensure that only authorized users can transfer, trade, or otherwise interact with your art.

In straightforward technical terms, allowlists verify a wallet address during the buying transaction. If the address is not on the list, the transaction is rejected.

This list of addresses creates a barrier that makes it difficult for bots and other malicious actors to take advantage of your art drop, as they must first obtain a approved address.

Additionally, allowlists can help manage risk by monitoring certain types of activity, such as sending large amounts of funds or transferring large amounts of digital assets. Using an allowlist, developers can ensure that their project is secure and protected from unwanted activity.

On top of the security they provide, allowlists also serve as a way to reward true fans of your project. Think of it as a tool that can reward your early supporters or provide utility for other projects by granting exclusive access.

Given the protection and utility that allowlists provide, creators need to know how to make them and implement them in their projects.

Making an allowlist with Bueno

If you're sitting there thinking, "Dang, I have no idea how to make an allowlist," don't worry because it's super easy with Bueno.

After generating your collection, head to Bueno Forms to create an allowlist for your smart contract. Before you deploy, in the token Pricing tab you'll find an option that says "enable Pre-Sale Allowlist." Then, navigate to Select an Allowlist and find your list from the choices below.