Instagram will start testing NFTs with select creators in the United States this week. According to Adam Mosseri, the head of the social media platform, there will be no fees associated with posting or sharing the digital collectibles on the platform.
Mark Zuckerberg corroborated this in his talk with Tom Bilyeu, co-founder of billion-dollar brand Quest Nutrition and the co-founder and host of Impact Theory, about NFTs, web3 and the metaverse. He said, “This week we’re starting to test digital collectibles on Instagram so creators and collectors can display their NFTs on their profile.
Zuckerberg also said that a similar functionality is coming to Facebook soon, along with augmented reality NFTs on Instagram Stories via Spark AR so you can place digital art into physical spaces. Meta is considering enabling NFTs in its other apps, such as Messenger and WhatsApp
Coindesk reports that Instagram is planning NFT integrations for Ethereum, Polygon, Solana and Flow. The third-party wallets compatible for use at launch will include Rainbow, MetaMask, and Trust Wallet, with Coinbase, Dapper and Phantom coming soon.
According to Mosseri, creators will be able to share NFTs that they made or they have bought, either in feed, or in stories or in messaging.
“I want to acknowledge upfront that NFTs and blockchain technologies are all about distributing trust and distributing power,” he adds.
“But Instagram is fundamentally a centralized platform, so there’s a tension there. So one of the reasons why we’re starting small is we want to make sure that we can learn from the community. We want to make sure that we work out how to embrace those tenets of distributed trust and distributed power, despite the fact that we are, yes, a centralized platform. We do think that one of the unique opportunities we have to to make web3 technology accessible to a much broader range of people. And NFTs specifically we think will be interesting not only to creators who create NFT art, but also to people who want to collect it.”
According to Techcrunch, creators who are part of the initial NFTs test include: @adambombsquad, @bluethegreat, @bossbeautiesnft, @c.syresmith, @cynthiaerivo, @garyvee, @jenstark, @justmaiko, @maliha_z_art, @misshattan, @nopattern, @oseanworld, @paigebueckers, @phiawilson, @swopes and @yungjake.
Mosseri said this new launch will create an interesting opportunity for a subset of creators.
