It can be difficult to guarantee that your existing community members will be able to mint during public sales, especially if the drop mints out quickly. To help avoid a “gas war” or massive competition during the drop, you can create presale stages for your drop.
“Mint stages” are phases of the drop during which only specified sets of allowlisted wallet addresses can mint NFTs from your contract. Mint stages are enforced on-chain, so even tech-savvy users won’t be able to get past this limitation unless they’re on the allowlist.
You can add up to 5 presale stages for your drop, each with its own price, mint limits (per wallet), and allowlists. Only one presale stage can occur at a given time.
To add a presale stage, in your Drop settings, you can click + Add a presale. This will open a pop-up window where you can edit the stage. Make sure to do this in advance, as you can’t edit the allowlist for any presale stages after minting begins.
Every allowlist is encrypted end-to-end, so there is no way for others to view who was added to an allowlist on-chain or in the product. OpenSea does log information related to allowlists internally for analytics purposes.
Best Practices for Allowlists
Additive allowlists
When you create a drop on OpenSea, you can enforce a limit on how many NFTs a wallet can mint from your drop (mint limit). This can be useful if you’d like to avoid a few wallets minting a large number of NFTs from your collection.
As a default setting, drops on OpenSea currently enforce additive allowlists, meaning that if a user is included in all presale stages, the stage per-wallet limits you set in one presale stage will roll over to the next stage.
OpenSea treats the public stage as “additional” to your presale mint limits, so if a user has 1 allowlist mint and the public mint is set to 1 max per wallet, then the user is eligible for a total of 2 mints.
Once users have minted their maximum limit, they won’t be able to continue minting from that wallet. If you plan to have users mint in multiple presale stages, be sure to include their wallet address in each presale allowlist.
The overall supply of NFTs in a presale stage can’t be capped. The best way to limit the number of tokens minted during a presale stage is to include per-wallet limits in your allowlist.
We generally recommend having only one presale stage, as having multiple can complicate the drop experience.
Custom per-wallet limits and custom per-wallet stage prices
Within an allowlist for a certain presale stage, you can also customize the number of mints and the price for an individual wallet address, regardless of the broader specifications for that presale stage. This means that a given user may mint up to a lower or higher amount than others who haven’t been assigned a custom limit.
Custom per-wallet limits will roll over to the next stage and be added to that stage’s per-wallet limit, so long as the user is eligible.
Custom prices don’t roll over from one presale stage to the next. Unless a custom price is assigned within the stage’s allowlist, the stage price will apply to all users.
Allowlist formatting
Your allowlist file for each stage must be:
- A .csv file
- Formatted as [valid Ethereum wallet address, customer per-wallet limit (optional), custom per-wallet price (optional)].
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- Note: ENS names aren’t supported at this time.
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- The file should not include headers or any duplicate addresses.
- We support a limit of 30,000 addresses per presale stage
Mint examples
If you don’t have a use case for assigning individual, per-wallet limits or custom prices, your allowlists will be additive, and your users can mint items in any stage they are included in, up to the overall mint limit.
The following is an example of more than one presale stage, with potentially overlapping lists of users. These stages don’t include custom per-wallet limits or per-wallet pricing.
| Mint stage | Stage mint limit | Custom per-wallet limit | Custom per-wallet stage price | User experience 1 | User experience 2 |
| Presale stage 1 | 2 | No | No | Eligible | Eligible |
| Presale stage 2 | 1 | No | No | Eligible | Not eligible |
| Public | 1 | N/A | N/A | Eligible | Eligible |
| Mint total | 4 | 3 |
User experience 1
In this example, Collector Chen’s wallet address is included in both presale stages of the mint. Because everyone can participate in the public mint, he’s also eligible for that stage. Here’s what can happen during the mint:
- Chen can mint up to 2 items in stage 1
- If he didn’t mint both items in stage 1, he can mint the rest during stage 2 in addition to 1 more mint at this time
- In addition to the allocation given to him in the presale stage, Chen can also mint an additional item from the public stage, for a total of 4 items.
User experience 2
If Chen was only included in the first presale stage of this mint:
- He could mint his items during either stage 1 or stage 2.
- He wouldn’t receive the additional item for stage 2 users, so he’d have a total of 3 items available to mint.
You can specify per-wallet limits within your presale stages if you want to assign a given user a lower or higher mint limit than the standard stage mint limit.
The following is an example of more than one presale stage, with potentially overlapping lists of users. These stages include custom per-wallet limits, but they don’t include any per-wallet pricing.
| Mint stage | Stage mint limit | Custom per-wallet limit | Custom per-wallet stage price | User experience 1 | User experience 2 | User experience 3 |
| Presale 1 | 2 | Yes | No | Eligible | Eligible | Eligible |
| Presale 2 | 1 | Yes | No | Eligible | Not eligible | Eligible |
| Public | 1 | N/A | N/A | Eligible | Eligible | Eligible |
| Mint total | 10 | 6 | 7 |
User experience 1
In this example, Collector Carla’s wallet address is included in presale stage 1 with a custom mint allocation of 5, and presale stage 2 with a custom allocation of 4. Here’s what can happen during the mint:
- Carla can mint up to 5 items in stage 1
- If she didn’t mint all 5 items in stage 1, she can mint the rest during stage 2 in addition to 4 more mints
- She can also mint an additional item from the public stage, for a total of 10 items
User experience 2
If Carla was only included in the first presale stage with a custom mint allocation of 5:
- She could mint all 5 items during either stage 1 or stage 2.
- She wouldn’t receive any additional items for stage 2 users
- She can also mint an additional item from the public stage, for a total of 6 items
User experience 3
If Carla was included in both presale stages, but only assigned a custom mint allocation of 4 in the second presale stage:
- She could mint 2 items in stage 1
- If she didn’t mint both items in stage 1, she can mint the rest during stage 2 in addition to 4 more mints
- She can also mint an additional item from the public stage, for a total of 7 items
You can specify a custom per-wallet stage price within your presale stages if you want to customize the mint price for certain users.
The following is an example of more than one presale stage, with potentially overlapping lists of users. These stages include custom per-wallet pricing, but they don’t include any custom per-wallet limits.
| Mint stage | Stage mint limit | Custom per-wallet limit | Custom per-wallet stage price | User experience 1 | User experience 2 |
| Presale 1 | 2 | No | Yes | Eligible | Eligible |
| Presale 2 | 1 | No | Yes | Eligible | Eligible |
| Public | 1 | N/A | N/A | Eligible | Eligible |
| Mint total | 4 | 5 |
User experience 1
In this example, Collector Carson’s wallet address is included in both presale lists, but only assigned a per-wallet price in the first stage. Here’s what can happen during the mint:
- Carson can mint up to 2 items in stage 1 at a custom price.
- If they haven’t minted all items during stage 1, they can mint the rest during stage 2 (at the standard stage 2 price) along with 1 additional mint for stage 2.
- Carson can mint an additional item from the public stage, for a total of 4 items
User experience 2
If Carson was in both presale stages with a custom price assigned in both stages:
- They could mint up to 2 items in stage 1 at a custom price
- If they didn’t mint both items, they could mint the rest during stage 2, in addition to 2 more items. All items would have the per-wallet price assigned for stage 2.
- Carson can also mint an additional item from the public stage, for a total of 5 items.
You can use custom per-wallet mint limits and pricing to reward individual users or communities during your drop.
The following is an example of more than one presale stage, representing two different communities.
| Mint stage | Stage mint limit | Custom per-wallet limit | Custom per-wallet stage price | User experience 1 | User experience 2 |
| Presale 1 | 2 | Yes | Yes | Eligible | Eligible |
| Presale 2 | 2 | Yes | Yes | Eligible | Eligible |
| Public | 1 | N/A | N/A | Eligible | Eligible |
| Mint total | 7 | 10 |
User experience 1
In this example, Collector Charu’s wallet address is included in both presale lists. In the first presale list, she’s assigned a mint limit of 4 and a custom price. In the second presale list, she’s assigned a custom price but no limit. Here’s what can happen during the mint:
- Charu can mint up to 4 items in stage 1 at a custom price.
- If they haven’t minted all items during stage 1, they can mint the rest during stage 2 (at the custom stage 2 price) along with the stage mint limit of 2 additional mints.
- As always, Charu can mint an additional item from the public stage, for a total of 7 items
User experience 2
Charu is included in presale stage 1 with a custom limit of 4 and a custom price. She is also included in presale stage 2 with a custom limit of 5 and no custom price.
- She could mint up to 4 items in stage 1 at a custom price
- If she didn’t mint all items, she could mint the rest during stage 2, in addition to 5 more items. All items would have the standard presale stage 2 price.
- Charu can also mint an additional item from the public stage, for a total of 10 items
Allowlists glossary
- Additive allowlists: With an additive allowlist, mint limits from stage to stage are rolled over and are cumulative for any stage a user is eligible for.
- Stage per-wallet limit: The default number of items a user can mint in a given stage.
- Custom per-wallet limit: To further customize your allowlist you can assign unique per-wallet limits to individual wallets.
- Stage price: The default price to mint an item in a given stage.
- Custom per-wallet stage price: Optionally, you can assign unique, per-wallet pricing, which allows that wallet to mint at a specified price different from the stage price.
