Generate Unrevealed

This is an advanced manual delayed-reveal workflow: already-minted tokens can show a placeholder until you change the metadata base URI. It is separate from Scatter's instant reveal on mint, where a token's metadata is not accessible until it is minted. Most creators using Scatter Uploader should start with that guide.

If you want to have a setup where you do not reveal any minted NFTs initially, and then reveal the entire collection later on, this is possible to do on Scatter.

This guide is for manual IPFS workflows. For Scatter-managed hosting, use the Scatter Uploader.

This workflow assumes you can manage IPFS hosting independently. Review the IPFS Self-hosting requirements before proceeding.

You first pick your preview image. Then upload this image to a centralized file hosting service (not recommended) or upload to IPFS using an available uploader service, or upload with your own IPFS client on a server ( https://docs.ipfs.tech/install/ipfs-desktop/ ↗ ).

Get the CID of your image. You want to make sure that the direct link to your image is the direct path to the image and not a folder.

You can test this by loading in an HTTP IPFS gateway for example:

https://ipfs.io/ipfs/CIDHERE/

If this shows a folder, click the image and use that link instead.

Your final image link will be like:

ipfs://CIDHERE/

or possibly

ipfs://CIDHERE/preview.gif

Now create your placeholder JSONs. For a browser-based option, use Generate Unrevealed JSONs ↗. For the Python option:

https://github.com/Scatter-Partners/useful-scripts/blob/master/json/generate_json_unrevealed.py ↗

You will need to modify this script to fit your needs.

Once you have the JSON files generated within the output folder, and you verify all is good, you can upload the output folder to IPFS ( https://docs.ipfs.tech/install/ipfs-desktop/ ↗ ).

You can test again with the HTTP IPFS with your CID of your folder. This time it should be a folder of JSON files without the .json at the end.

When you deploy your collection or update your base URI from the Contract tab your base URI should look like:

ipfs://CIDHERE/

This should be all you need to create an unrevealed version of your metadata which can then be swapped to the revealed version later on.

When you are ready for the delayed reveal, pin your final metadata and media, check their URLs, and change the base URI to the final metadata folder. For refreshing the metadata displayed on Scatter, follow Refresh Collection Metadata.

Note that if you swap to a fully revealed version later on and you still have supply left to mint, people will be able to look up which files are in which order.

If you host your metadata on a HTTP server you can obviously upload your unrevealed image and JSONs in one go. Also, if you have super rares, you may want to still have some indication of them in the unrevealed metadata.