The job of an NFT is to simply assign metadata to you. This metadata lives on the blockchain, but not necessarily the assets (jpegs, etc.). Now, it's important to know if these assets are immutable and decentralized. This is to make sure no one can modify an already minted NFT.

With that, let's find out how to get this metadata:

📖 Step 1: Get the Contract Address

You can easily find the contract address of your NFT on its OpenSea URL. Using Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) as an example, it should look like:

0xbc4ca0eda7647a8ab7c2061c2e118a18a936f13d

🔍 Step 2: Go to Etherscan.io

Replace the contract address from the step above in the following URL and it should take you to the Read Contract section. In BAYC example, we go to:

https://etherscan.io/address/0xbc4ca0eda7647a8ab7c2061c2e118a18a936f13d#readContract

🔗 Step 3: Get the Metadata!

Under Read Contract section, head to tokenURI and enter tokenId (this could be your NFT id or someone else's) and hit the Query button. This will return the metadata. This is what you paid for! In the BAYC example, we get this external link by using 42 as tokenId:

ipfs://QmeSjSinHpPnmXmspMjwiXyN6zS4E9zccariGR3jxcaWtq/42

🔥 Step 4: Read Metadata & Assets

This step depends upon metadata type. Most popular projects (BAYC, Doodles, etc.) use InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) to store data. To access IPFS using your browser, you can append IPFS content address end of https://ipfs.io/ipfs/. So, to read BAYC #42 metadata go to:

https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmeSjSinHpPnmXmspMjwiXyN6zS4E9zccariGR3jxcaWtq/42

This should return a JSON blob with IPFS image link and traits of the Ape #42. To get the image, simply use https://ipfs.io/ipfs/ again.

👇 Full resolution link to the BAYC #42 image👇

https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmdVqrjbXLnxNy9ifPAq1pnD4vhgtkfFzhX2ixyxUM7Dqf

Now that we have the metadata. In Part 2, I will mention various storage methods (yes, better than IPFS) and how safe they are.