According to a story from The Financial Times, social media conglomerate Meta is looking into allowing users to make, promote, and sell NFTs on Facebook and Instagram.
If the corporation offers such tools, it will be the most public display of support for NFTs to yet, helping to cement the controversial assets’ place in the digital world.
The ideas are “in an early stage and could potentially change,” according to the Financial Times. According to the journal, Facebook and Instagram are “readying” a feature that will allow users to use NFTs as profile photographs, as well as developing a prototype that would allow users to mint new NFTs. Other Meta employees are allegedly talking about “launching a marketplace for consumers to buy and sell NFTs.”
It’s tough to say how far advanced these ideas are, but this isn’t the first time Meta’s leaders have expressed interest in NFTs. Last December, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri stated the firm is “currently exploring NFTs and how we can make them more accessible to a wider audience,” while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the metaverse will need to enable “ownership of digital products or NFTs” in October.
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Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, have been gaining traction with other well-known web platforms in recent months. Twitter is developing ways to highlight blockchain-enabled things, while Reddit has its own set of NFT avatars for users.
Despite the fact that NFTs are often mocked for their speculative worth and lack of security, these assets will grow more valuable if existing tech behemoths choose to support them.
An NFT is, at its core, a mechanism to claim ownership of a digital object like a JPG or GIF using a unique blockchain address. Moreover, despite assertions that these assets represent decentralized forms of ownership, their legitimacy is dependent on acceptance by current internet platforms. Who knows who owns your JPG of a smoking chimp if Twitter or Instagram allow anyone to copy and paste it?
NFTs, on the other hand, could become actual digital assets if corporations start enforcing ownership rights as indicated by them.
Embracing NFTs might also help Meta gain more clout in the metaverse, which the firm has coined as a hazy concept of interconnected virtual worlds akin to the promises of VR universes made in the 1990s and prior. This might potentially increase the value and importance of NFTs while also centralizing asset control.
