This Week, Instagram Will Launch NFTs

NFTs will be available on Instagram soon, as promised. According to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the app will begin testing a means for users to show non-fungible tokens on their accounts this week.

“We’re starting building for NFTs, not just in our metaverse and Reality Labs work, but also across our family of apps,” Zuckerberg stated in a Facebook post. “We’re starting to test digital collectibles on Instagram so that creators and collectors can display their NFTs.”

A similar feature is on the way to Facebook, and Meta is thinking about enabling NFTs in its other apps, including Messenger and WhatsApp. A method for displaying 3D NFTs on Instagram Stories utilizing augmented reality is also in the works. This feature, according to Zuckerberg, would be based on Spark AR and would allow users to “place digital art in physical spaces.”

Over the weekend, rumors circulated that Instagram will begin testing non-fungible tokens in the app this week. According to a reliable source, Meta will support NFTs from the Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, and Flow blockchains.

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri clarified how the NFT integrations will function. NFTs made or purchased by users will be able to be shared in their feed, Stories, and messages. To begin with, only a small number of people in the United States will have access to these functions.

Mosseri also pointed out the disparity between the decentralized nature of Web3 technology like NFTs and blockchain and Instagram’s centralized structure. “One of the reasons why we’re starting small is we want to make sure that we can learn from the community,” he explained. “We want to make sure we can work out how to embrace those tenets of distributed trust and distributed power, despite the fact that we are a centralized platform.”

According to Mosseri, there would be no fees “associated with posting or sharing a digital collectible” on Instagram. He claimed in his statement that NFTs could provide a method for a subset of creators to earn a living on the platform. That suggests users will be able to buy and sell them directly on Instagram at some point. Zuckerberg has said that creators may eventually be able to mint NFTs in the app too.

The CEO of Meta has also commented about the company’s other goals for NFTs in the metaverse. “I would hope that you know, the clothing that your avatar is wearing in the metaverse, you know, can be basically minted as an NFT and you can take it between your different places,” he stated at SXSW in March.