To mint thousands of NFTs on Sui without hitting gas or performance limits:

1. Batch Minting: Group NFTs into smaller minting batches (e.g., 10–50 per transaction) to reduce gas overhead per NFT.

2. Optimize Move Code: Avoid heavy logic, large vectors, and expensive operations inside the mint function.

3. Use Off-Chain or Preloaded Metadata: Reference metadata by ID instead of embedding it in every transaction.

4. Leverage Kiosk or Capsule Standards: These can help separate minting from reveal and improve efficiency.

5. Backend Automation: Use scripts (e.g., with the TypeScript SDK) to send multiple mint transactions in parallel.

6. Implement Access Control: Add whitelist logic or per-wallet limits to prevent spam.

7. Retry Logic: Monitor mint transactions and reattempt failures automatically.

8. Test Locally First: Use Sui localnet or Testnet to simulate scale and monitor gas usage.

Avoid: One-NFT-per-transaction minting, overly complex on-chain metadata, and skipping gas estimation.

When handling large-scale NFT minting on Sui, performance and gas efficiency are crucial, especially when minting thousands of NFTs. Here’s how you can approach this efficiently:

1. Batch Minting

• Batch transactions: Instead of minting NFTs one by one, try to bundle multiple NFT mints in a single transaction. By grouping them into batches, you reduce the number of transactions and improve efficiency.
• Use Sui’s Multi-Transaction Support: Sui supports multi-transaction processing, which allows you to bundle operations together. This is particularly useful for minting large numbers of NFTs at once.

2. Gas Fee Optimization

• Estimate Gas: Before initiating a large-scale minting, always estimate the gas costs for one mint operation and multiply that by the total number of NFTs. Consider running gas simulations using the sui client dry-run to determine the cost.
• Set a gas cap: Use the --gas-budget argument for each transaction to prevent overspending on gas, ensuring the budget is appropriate for minting multiple NFTs at once.
• Use Sui’s Fee Market: Monitor and adapt to Sui's dynamic fee market. If minting hundreds/thousands of NFTs, try to do it during lower gas periods to minimize costs.

3. Optimize for Parallel Processing

• Use Parallel Execution: Sui is designed for parallel execution of transactions. Make sure your NFT minting process is optimized to run multiple mint transactions in parallel where possible, which will improve throughput.
• Parallel Minting via SDK: Use the Sui SDK (e.g., Typescript or Python) to send parallel mint requests to the network. By leveraging asynchronous programming, you can ensure multiple NFT mint operations are happening concurrently.

4. Object Pooling and Pre-minting

• Pre-mint Objects: Instead of minting NFTs on the fly, consider pre-minting a pool of NFT objects ahead of time (using a template or factory contract). This allows you to mint NFTs by simply moving pre-minted objects to the user’s account, reducing computation and gas costs.
• Object Pooling: Keep track of minted NFTs in a pool and distribute them as needed. This can drastically reduce the load on the blockchain.

5. Optimize Data Handling

• Efficient Metadata Storage: NFTs often come with metadata, which can be quite large. Consider storing the metadata off-chain (e.g., using IPFS or Arweave) and only storing the metadata hash on-chain. This keeps on-chain storage lightweight.
• Avoid Repeated Operations: If your NFTs are similar, ensure that you're not repeatedly executing the same operations for each NFT. Instead, batch similar operations to avoid redundant steps.

6. Use Custom Move Scripts

• Custom Move Contract for NFT Minting: Write a custom Move contract to handle NFT minting more efficiently. This will allow you to have more control over how the NFTs are created, reduce redundant checks, and ensure performance optimization.
• Use Move’s TransactionBuilder: In custom contracts, you can utilize Move's transaction builder for more efficient minting processes.

7. Monitor Network Load

• Keep an eye on Sui’s network conditions. If the network is congested, it might affect minting times and gas costs. You may want to plan your minting during times of lower activity or break your minting into smaller chunks.

8. Error Handling & Retries

• Handle Failures Gracefully: When minting on a large scale, ensure your system can handle failed transactions due to network issues, gas limits, or other factors. Implement a retry mechanism or a queuing system to retry failed mints.
• Track Transaction Success: Keep track of successfully minted NFTs to avoid duplicate mints or missed transactions.

9. Use Move Event Emission

• To verify the success of NFT minting, emit events from your Move contract for each minted NFT. This allows you to track progress and confirm that the minting process is proceeding as expected.

10. Testing and Profiling

• Before doing large-scale minting, test with smaller batches on the testnet to monitor gas usage, network latency, and performance.
• Profile Performance: Use Sui’s tools (like sui client dry-run) to profile the contract’s performance, gas usage, and identify potential bottlenecks.

Summary Checklist:

1. Batch Mint: Mint NFTs in groups to save on transaction overhead.
2. Gas Optimization: Estimate, monitor, and adjust gas budgets to avoid overpaying.
3. Parallel Execution: Leverage Sui’s parallel transaction execution capabilities.
4. Pre-mint & Pool NFTs: Pre-mint NFTs and use a pool for faster distribution.
5. Off-chain Metadata: Store large metadata off-chain and use hashes on-chain.
6. Custom Move Scripts: Write efficient custom Move contracts for minting.
7. Monitor Network Conditions: Track network load to adjust your minting time.
8. Error Handling: Implement robust error handling and retry mechanisms.

By following these practices, you can efficiently mint thousands of NFTs on Sui with minimal performance and gas cost issues. Let me know if you need help with code examples or specific tooling!

Batching with Programmable Transaction Blocks (PTBs) is your best bet. You can mint multiple NFTs in a single transaction, drastically reducing gas costs and network overhead compared to individual mints. Design your mint function to be as lean as possible, and consider off-chain metadata storage for large collections to further optimize costs. For user-facing mints, explore gas sponsorship.

To handle large-scale NFT minting on Sui efficiently, use batching to mint multiple NFTs in a single transaction when possible. Design your NFT structure to minimize unnecessary metadata or state changes that increase gas usage. Avoid shared objects during minting to maximize parallelism and reduce contention. Use dynamic fields within a single object to track minted NFTs instead of creating many separate parent objects. Implement lazy minting or deferred metadata updates to spread computation across transactions. Use Sui’s developer tools to profile gas usage and optimize costly operations. Store only essential on-chain data and move heavy metadata off-chain using references like IPFS or Arweave. Consider splitting minting into scheduled waves to prevent spikes in demand and resource contention. Write robust test cases to simulate high-volume minting and catch bottlenecks early. Monitor transaction effects and failures in devnet or testnet before mainnet deployment.