The NFT Academy

Who, why, and how

About this site

What this is, how the rankings work, how it makes money, and, since it matters, what this domain used to be before we bought it.

Published

Who runs this

The site is founded and edited by Brett Malinowski, CEO of WGMI Media and host of the WGMI Podcast. His background, his other work and what he is accountable for here are all on that page.

What this is

An independent resource for understanding NFTs, Web3 and digital assets. It publishes plain-English guides, side-by-side comparisons, free browser-based calculators, and honest reviews of the courses worth paying for.

There’s no token. There’s no membership. There’s no Discord server. Nothing on this site is gated, and nothing is sold from it directly.

The history of this domain, since it matters

Between late 2021 and early 2025, thenftacademy.com was something quite different: an NFT project that sold a 3,000-supply "Elite NFT Academy Pass" at 0.5 ETH, granting access to training on building and launching NFT collections. It went dormant in 2025 and the domain lapsed.

We acquired it in 2026. We have no connection to the previous operators, and we haven’t continued anything they were doing. If you hold one of those passes, this site can’t help you — we have no access to that project, its Discord, or its records.

We’re saying this plainly and prominently because the alternative — quietly inheriting a brand’s reputation without acknowledging what it was — is the kind of thing that makes this industry hard to trust. The name was a good description of what we wanted to build. That’s the only reason we have it.

How we rank courses

This is the part most review sites are vague about, so here is the actual method.

Every course is scored by a rating weighted for sample size. Formally, a Bayesian average: each course’s rating is pulled towards the category average in proportion to how few ratings it has. A 5.0 from two reviews lands near the middle of the pack. A 4.6 from 7,894 reviews stays near the top.

This matters because the naive sort, order by rating, puts courses with two five-star reviews above the most-tested courses in the category. Several such courses are in our dataset, and we include them precisely so you can see why they aren’t recommended, rather than hiding them.

Beyond the score, for each course we:

  • Read the syllabus and check the last-updated date
  • Write out the weaknesses, not only the strengths
  • Flag anything with fewer than 100 ratings as having no meaningful quality signal
  • Say plainly when we wouldn’t recommend it — several entries say "best for: nobody, yet"

All 25 courses were read from Udemy’s own listings on 11 September 2026. Ratings, review counts, prices and durations are as observed that day. Prices on Udemy are promotional and change constantly, which is why every price on this site is labelled "when we checked" rather than presented as current.

How we make money

Affiliate commission. If you buy a course through a link here, the platform pays us a percentage at no extra cost to you. That’s the entire business model — no advertising, no sponsored placements, no paid reviews, no newsletter sponsorships.

Three things worth knowing about how that interacts with the rankings:

  • Every course in the dataset is on the same platform at broadly the same price. There’s nothing to bias towards — the commission on our top pick and our bottom pick is effectively identical.
  • The ranking code contains no reference to commission. It’s a weighted rating and nothing else. The scoring function is described above in full.
  • We publish a page arguing you probably don’t need to buy anything. It’s here, and it’s linked from the main navigation, not buried.

The full affiliate disclosure is here.

Our editorial position, stated once

We think the technology is interesting and worth understanding. We think the investment case was oversold to an enormous number of people who lost money, and that pretending otherwise would make this site worse.

So, consistently across every page:

  • We cite the actual market numbers, including the ones that are unflattering — trading volume fell roughly 37% in 2025 to about $5.5 billion.
  • We say when course material has aged badly. The marketing courses page opens by telling you the category is weak.
  • We don’t publish price predictions, "which collections to buy", or anything resembling investment advice.
  • We put the security guides in the main navigation, because losing what you buy is a more common outcome than any other.

What is on the site

Corrections

If something here is wrong, we want to know. Course details change, marketplace terms change, and tax treatment of digital assets is unsettled. Every page carries a last-updated date so you can judge how stale it might be. Tell us what we got wrong and we will fix it.

What this site isn’t

  • Not financial advice. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any asset.
  • Not tax advice. The tax estimator is arithmetic with a large disclaimer attached.
  • Not legal advice. Regulatory treatment of digital assets varies enormously by jurisdiction.
  • Not connected to any project. Including the one that previously used this domain.

Questions about this site

Is this the same NFT Academy from 2021?
No. Between late 2021 and early 2025 this domain belonged to an unrelated NFT project that sold a 3,000-supply "Elite NFT Academy Pass" at 0.5 ETH. It went dormant and the domain lapsed. We bought it in 2026. We have no connection to the previous operators and no access to their Discord, records or membership list. If you hold one of those passes, this site can’t help you.
How does this site make money?
Affiliate commission on some course links, and nothing else. There’s no token, no membership, no paid newsletter, no sponsored posts and nothing sold from the site directly. The disclosure page has the detail.
Does affiliate commission affect the course rankings?
No, and the method is published precisely so you can check. Ranking is a Bayesian average of rating and review count. It has no input for commission, and several courses ranked above monetised ones earn us nothing. The full ranked list is here.
How often is the course data re-checked?
Every course row carries the date its figures were read from the platform listing. Udemy prices are promotional and move constantly, so the site always says "price when we checked" rather than asserting a current price. If you spot a stale row, telling us is useful.
Do you accept sponsored posts or paid reviews?
No. We don’t accept sponsored posts, paid placements or paid reviews, and we don’t add projects to the site on request.