Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:FB) owned Instagram has decided to join the non-fungible tokens (NFTs) party and is to test its own digital collectables this week, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Monday.
NFTs are digital assets that represent real-world objects and are bought and sold online.
Instagram's push for NFTs comes at a time when sales of NFTs have fallen a massive 92% since September last year, data from the NonFungible website shows, with sales slumping to a daily average of about 19,000 last week from a 225,000 peak in September.
Instagram will use select US creators, according to Instagram chief executive Adam Mosseri, with those participating in the testing allowed to create or buy NFTs.
It is a way for content creators to earn money on the platform and is in addition to the subscription plan that Meta recently began testing.
The social media platform has integrated Ethereum and Polygon blockchains to facilitate this, while Flow and Solana are set to follow.
Zuckerberg confirmed the social network is testing NFTs on Instagram, with "similar functionality" planned for Facebook in the near future.
"Similar functionality is coming to Facebook soon, along with augmented reality NFTs on Instagram Stories via Spark AR so you can place digital art into physical spaces," he announced.
The company will also be developing 3D NFTs or augmented reality NFTs, Zuckerberg said.
Meta views NFTs as an important part of its quest to commercialise the metaverse and is also exploring other Web3 options besides NFTs.
Mosseri said in a video there will be no fees associated with posting or sharing a digital collectable on Instagram, adding the purpose of NFTs and blockchain technologies, and Web3 more broadly, is to distribute power and trust.
But Instagram is fundamentally a centralised platform, he said, "so there's a tension there", but support for NFTs on Instagram is expected to further popularise the technology.