Instagram is Officially Testing NFT Integration

A handful of creators and collectors in the US will soon be able to display NFTs on their Instagram feed, stories, or messages

It's official: NFTs are coming to Instagram and Facebook. Through a Facebook post, Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that his company has started to test NFTs on Instagram this week so that a group of creators and collectors can display their NFTs on their profile, and that similar functionality will also come to Facebook soon.

In addition to that, Zuckerberg also mentioned that Meta is also planning to work on augmented reality NFTs, which are basically 3D NFTs that can be brought to Instagram Stories using Spark AR software platform. According to Zuckerberg, the idea is to enable creators and collectors "to put digital art into 3D spaces and project it onto physical spaces."

Instagram head Adam Mosseri also weighed in to give more details as to how NFTs will work on Instagram. In a video, Mosseri explained that initially, the feature is going to be available only to a handful of creators and collectors in the US. Those lucky few will have the ability to display NFTs on their feed, stories, as well as messages.

The details for each NFT — or digital collectible, as Instagram likes to call it — are displayed in a similar way to tagged profiles and products, and when users click on the tag, the app will display details such as the name of the creator and owner of each NFT.

Mosseri was also quick to point out that the company won't charge users a single dime for posting or sharing NFTs on Instagram. This is clearly a nod to criticism about Twitter's decision to only allow paying subscribers to display NFTs as their profile pictures.

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

Instagram's decision to test NFT integration on a small scale, according to Mosseri, is based on the company's willingness to learn from the community. He points out how the centralized nature of Instagram directly contradicts with the decentralized ethos of Web3 in general, and that the test will enable Instagram to try to work out "how to embrace those tenets of distributed trust and distributed power."

The announcement that NFTs are coming to Instagram and Facebook arrived shortly after rumors of it became widespread. The rumors claimed that Instagram will support NFTs minted on the Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, and Flow blockchains. It has now been confirmed by Meta's spokesperson to The Verge that both Ethereum and Polygon will be supported initially, while support for Solana and Flow will follow soon.

For the Indonesia market, this is definitely good news as there are many creators who are actively making projects on the Ethereum and Polygon blockchains. Instagram has always been one of the chosen mediums to promote NFT projects, and with this integration, the technology will surely be more accessible to more people. However, as of this writing, Instagram hasn't mentioned anything about its plan on bringing the feature into other countries.