NFTs are coming to Instagram, with testing starting this week

By Anita George May 9, 2022

Those non-fungible tokens (NFTs) aren’t going away anytime soon. In fact, they’re even coming to a certain popular photo-sharing app near you.

On Monday, Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Meta Platforms, announced via a video posted on Facebook that Instagram would begin testing NFTs as early as this week. Referring to them as “digital collectibles,” Zuckerberg said that the move to test NFTs on Instagram was so “that creators and collectors can display their NFTs” on their profiles. He also went on to mention that a “similar functionality” would also be brought to Facebook as well, but did not specify when that would happen.

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Zuckerberg’s video announcement also mentioned that augmented reality NFTs (what he called “3D NFTs”) were also being developed for Instagram, describing them as NFTs that could be added to Instagram Stories using Spark AR (a software AR platform) so that “you can put this kind of digital art into 3D spaces and kind of project it on to physical spaces as well.”

Zuckerberg was not the only person to announce this news. Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri took to Twitter on Monday with a video announcement of his own regarding NFTs and the popular photo-sharing app. Mosseri offered up a few more details on the upcoming inclusion of NFTs on Instagram.

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

Mosseri’s announcement explained that this week’s testing of NFTs would initially only be open to a few creators and collectors in the U.S., and that it would involve letting some users share NFTs “that they’ve made or that they’ve bought” on Instagram’s Feed, Stories, or in messaging. Mosseri’s tweeted announcement also noted that there “will be no fees associated with posting or sharing a digital collectible on IG.”

While there is considerable excitement over NFTs, they are not without controversy. Among many These “unique digital items” have a considerable carbon footprint when it comes to how much power is consumed during transactions that involve it.

While Meta is only talking about sharing NFTs on its platforms, it remains to be seen how popularizing them in this way may contribute to more NFT creation and purchases and thus a possibly larger carbon footprint.

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Anita George has been writing for Digital Trends' Computing section since 2018. So for almost six years, Anita has written…

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