Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, made recently announced that the wildly popular social media platform Instagram has started testing non-fungible token (NFT) integration. According to Zuckerberg, the same may soon be happening on Facebook.
Meta embraces NFTs.
On Monday, Instagram CEO Adam Mosser announced that a small group of users in the United States could start using NFTs on their feed† stories and posts on the platform. These “digital collectibles” could be used in the same way that, for example, profile pictures are already used.
NFTs on Instagram
This week we’re beginning to test digital collectibles with a handful of US creators and collectors who will be able to share NFTs on Instagram. There will be no fees associated with posting or sharing a digital collectible on IG.
See you next week! pic.twitter.com/VuJbMVSBDr
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) May 9, 2022
Mosser also acknowledged that there is a certain “tension” created by Instagram’s use of NFTs. Decentralization is often seen by the community as almost something sacred, but in the case of Instagram, decentralization is of course hard to find.
“I want to acknowledge up front that NFTs and blockchain technology and Web3 in a broader sense are all about dividing trust, dividing power. But Instagram is fundamentally a centralized platform, so there’s a tension there.”
Instagram users can even send external wallets, such as Rainbow or MetaMask, to their Instagram account. In the future, wallets from Coinbase and Phantom are added. In addition, NFTs built on the Ethereum (ETH)Polygon (MATIC), Solana (SOL) and Flow blockchains are used on Instagram.
Meta and Web3
According to Mark Zuckerberg, the coming years will be dominated by the growth of web3† He expects Web3 to become a mature industry within the next five years and Meta says he is taking an important first step in this. Zuckerberg expects other tech giants to follow Meta’s lead.
According to a report that was published by Deutsche Bank, the integration of NFTs by Meta platforms could indeed give quite a boost to the NFT industry. They argue that this makes it easier for users to use NFTs and that it can pull the entire market forward.