Meta to Allow NFT Minting and Trading on Instagram

Social media platform Instagram is expanding the scope of its non-fungible token (NFT) offering, and will soon allow users to mint and sell their digital collections directly on the platform, parent company Meta said during its Creator Week 2022 on 2 November.

According to the announcement, Meta will offer creators an “end-to-end toolkit” that will enable them to make their digital collectibles directly on Instagram, and sell them “both on and off” the platform. The new features will first be tested by a small group of U.S.-based creators — including Amber Vittoria, Refik Anadol, Jason Seife, Dave Krugman, and others — after which it will be released to the general public and expanded to other countries. Meta’s commerce and fintech lead, Stephane Kasriel, said in a blog post:

“Right now, there are a lot of complex experiences in web3, and for its benefits to achieve widespread adoption, there needs to be a much simpler user experience. By making NFTs easier to use natively on Instagram, we’re opening up new ways for the billions of people who use our apps to connect with and support their favorite creators — which, in turn, unlocks more economic opportunity.”

In order to promote Meta’s NFT push, the company has decided to not charge any fees for creating and selling digital collectibles until 2024, but noted that transactions will still be subject to “app store fees”, such as Apple’s 30% commission on NFT sales. Meta will also cover all blockchain gas fees for buyers “at launch”, although it did not specify for how long it will do so.

Meta will also expand the types of digital collectibles available on Instagram, and will soon add support for video-based NFTs to the platform. In addition, Instagram will now pull metadata — such as names and description of collections — for select NFTs from popular marketplace OpenSea.

Solana will soon be added to the list of supported blockchains — currently Ethereum, Flow, and Polygon are supported —- as well as its popular Phantom wallet. Earlier this year, Meta expanded its NFT offering to Facebook, and expanded Instagram’s NFT program to over 100 countries in the Americas, Asia-Pacific, Middle East, and Africa regions.