Effect of “Lazy Minting” on User Minting Strategies in NFT Marketplaces

The booming of NFTs in recent years causes Ethereum congestion and higher gas fees. To alleviate this problem, “lazy minting”, a new mechanism allowing creators to mint NFTs without transferring on-chain, thus avoiding upfront gas, is implemented in some NFT marketplaces. However, no research investigates its impact on users’ minting behaviors and sales performance in NFT marketplaces. Therefore, we conduct an empirical analysis based on the lazy minting implementation in OpenSea with multiple-period difference-in-differences. Our study finds that lazy minting sellers mint more user-generated NFTs without sacrificing the NFTs’ perceived value and mint fewer third-party generated NFTs. Lazy minting sellers frequently adjust auctions for lazy minting NFTs and set lower starting prices. Furthermore, the number of transactions and profit of lazy minting sellers increase after adoption, which owes to the lazy minting NFTs.Our study holds practical implications for the upfront cost management of NFT marketplaces and similar two-sided marketplaces.