Published on: 09/05/2022
Meta announces plans to integrate NFTs into Instagram
Mark Zuckerberg has announced plans to integrate NFT systems such as Ethereum, Polygon, Solana & Flow, and CoinDesk into Instagram. Meta is anticipated to provide an official statement on this matter as early as next week.
“Over the next several months, the ability to bring some of your NFTs in, hopefully over time be able to mint things within that environment,” Zuckerberg said in a South By Southwest session
At #SXSW, Mark Zuckerberg just said that “hopefully” in the coming months you’ll be able to mint NFTs within Instagram
— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) March 15, 2022
As early as last year, Instagram head Adam Mosseri indicated that the team was “actively exploring NFTs”. However, no announcements were made.
How NFT integration into Instagram will look like
According to reports, Facebook and Instagram were working on NFT integrations in January. An NFT may be used as a profile on the site and can be minted on the platform. There has also been a rumor about the platform planning to create an NFT marketplace.
It is still not entirely clear what precisely minting an NFT on Instagram would look like. The concept of a marketplace appears to be even further away from reality. It did not receive an explicit endorsement from Zuckerberg during his speech, despite the hefty valuation of sites like OpenSea making it an appealing financial proposition.
The pilot will feature a small number of U.S.-based NFT enthusiasts. Instagram did not confirm that it would support all four chains’ NFTs at launch. Instagram said, however, that it planned to enable popular crypto wallets such as MetaMask. Users will be able to authenticate ownership of NFTs, display them on their accounts, and tag the artists who created them by plugging in their wallets.
Instagram will not be the first extensive social network to integrate NFT. Twitter added a feature earlier this year that allowed certain users to use an NFT as their profile picture. The NFT profile pictures show up as hexagons. Unlike Twitter, however, Instagram will not charge users for posting and sharing NFTs as Twitter did originally for its hexagonal NFT profile images in January, according to CoinDesk’s verification.
A fresh wave of cultural recognition for NFTs is expected after the integration. More than a billion people use Instagram each month, many of whom use it to market and promote their creative endeavors.
What is NFT
NFT or non-fungible token refers to a digital asset that includes everything from paintings and animated GIFs to songs and video game items. Generally speaking, it is developed using the same type of programming as cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, but that is where the similarities between them end.
In NFTs, one may buy and sell the ownership of unique digital goods and keep track of who owns them by utilizing the blockchain.
Lately, a lot of people have shifted their occupation to NFT trading, with some selling for millions of dollars. High-profile memes such as Nyan Cat and the “deal with it” sunglasses have been offered in auctions.
NFTs, however, are not without problems. There have been discussions about the large amount of electricity consumed by NFTs as well as the environmental consequences of their use.
