Meta to allow Instagram creators to mint and sell NFTs

American Tech giant, Meta, on Thursday announced that it will roll out several new updates across Instagram and Facebook including an end-to-end toolkit that will allow creators to mint and sell non-fungible tokens directly to their fans, both on and off Instagram.

During its Creator Week 2022 event, Meta revealed that it is working on new features that will allow creators to produce, market, and sell NFTs based on the Polygon blockchain.

The NFTs will be available for purchase immediately within the Instagram app for users. According to Meta, users would be able to buy NFTs through the standard in-app purchases on both iOS and Android.

“Creators will soon be able to make their digital collectibles on Instagram and sell them to fans, both on and off Instagram. They’ll have an end-to-end toolkit — from creation (starting on the Polygon blockchain) and showcasing, to selling. People can easily support their favourite creators by buying their digital collectibles directly within Instagram,” Meta wrote in a blog post.

Instagram already supports several wallets and blockchains including Rainbow, MetaMask, Trust Wallet, Coinbase Wallet, Dapper Wallet, Ethereum, Polygon and Flow. Besides these, the company is also adding support for Solana and its Phantom wallet.

The blog post on Meta’s website states, “We’re also expanding the types of digital collectibles that you can showcase on Instagram to include video and adding support for the Solana blockchain and Phantom wallet, in addition to the blockchains and wallets that we already support.”

The move comes after another popular social media platform, Reddit, enjoyed unprecedented success launching its Polygon-based NFT avatars called “Digital Collectibles.” In a report by Fortune, Reddit NFT avatars’ total sales volume as of Wednesday, November 2, was at $10.36 million. Interestingly, similar to Reddit, Meta is also refraining from using the word NFT, preferring to use the term “digital collectibles” instead.

Additionally, the company announced that it also expanding access to subscriptions to all eligible US-based creators to help creators earn more income and connect more intimately with their fans. The new features will allow creators to charge fans for special access to premium Instagram Live videos and Stories.

In a move to make it more simple for users to discover Stars on Facebook, Meta is automatically enabling Stars on public creator content, including Reels. This will allow creators to get paid directly by viewers of their Reels, live, and video-on-demand content.