'Digital collectibles' will be accessible to some US users this week before making it available for all in the near future.
A group of non-fungible (NFT) creators and collectors will soon be able to display their tokens on Instagram. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed in a post that the company is testing NFTs on the platform, with "similar functionality" coming soon to Facebook.
Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in a video that a small group of US users will have the ability to display NFTs on their feed, stories, and in messages. NFT details are displayed in a similar way to tagged profiles and products and are named "digital collectibles." Clicking on the tag will display details like the name of the creator and owner.
Mosseri said the test is small to start so that Instagram can learn from the community. Perhaps in an attempt to tackle distrust of a major social networking platform jumping into NFTs, he brings up a tension between large companies like Instagram and the decentralised ethos of Web3.
"I want to acknowledge upfront that NFTs and blockchain technologies and Web3 more broadly are all about distributing trust, distributing power," Mosseri says. "But Instagram is fundamentally a centralised platform, so there's a tension there."
NFTs minted on the Ethereum and Polygon blockchains will be supported initially, with Solana and Flow coming soon, according to Meta spokesperson Christine Pai.
Mosseri emphasises that support for NFTs on Instagram could help introduce the technology to a broader range of people. Instagram isn't the first platform to do so: in January, Twitter introduced NFTs on the platform as hexagon-shaped profile pictures. Similarly, an icon in the corner of Instagram posts of NFTs also will appear as a hexagon.
In other NFT news, JD Sports' 'D'MENSIONS' launches an AR game and kicks off their first ever, highly anticipated JD-Verse NFT campaign at the end of it.