The shape
- The creator signs a commitment to a token's metadata — off chain, no transaction, no fee. Ten thousand commitments cost the same as one: nothing.
- A fan claims.
musicNft.claim_lazy_track(and equivalents across the NFT suite) mints the token directly to the fan in the same extrinsic. Fee: 0.000110 DMS on the testnet. - If the creator wants the fan to pay nothing either, a paymaster sponsors the claim under a policy — say, any holder of a KryptoOS verified-human credential, one claim per account.
The chain's state holds only tokens someone actually wanted. Unclaimed drops cost nobody anything.
Why it is free for the creator
Because nothing happens on chain until a claim. Batch minting (100 tokens for 0.0022 DMS) is cheap; lazy minting is free until wanted, which for distribution to fans is the right economics.
Royalties still hold
A lazy-minted token carries the collection's royalty rule from pallet-nft-royalties. A free drop that is later resold pays the creator on the resale, enforced by the runtime, on any marketplace.
Anti-spam without a fee wall
A free claim invites bots. The sponsor's paymaster policy can require a verified-human credential; pallet-creator-studio-fees gives humans up to 50 % off fees; and the collection can cap claims per account. Bots get nothing; fans get the drop.
Status
Lazy claim and batch mint have measured fees on the testnet. A sponsored lazy claim from a credentialed account has not been exercised end to end. No creator has run a drop; there is one DID on the chain. The page this replaces celebrated a free-drop platform on another chain as only possible there. The mechanism above is possible here, natively, and unused — which is the honest version of only possible.
For a creator who wants to try
Create a collection (0.00012 DMS), sign commitments, publish the claim links, fund a small paymaster. The first drop claimed by a fan on the public testnet gets a post in the Firsts series.
Based on FEE_MODEL_AND_LOW_COST_STRATEGY.md §2 and EIP_COVERAGE.md.