The news has broken about Meta’s intention to enter the NFT market, with stories from publications such as the Financial Times detailing that the company is exploring avenues for their two primary social media platforms to create, host, and sell NFTs.
If this was to happen, it will mark the first major company in the world to embrace the advancement of NFT technology, and bring it into the mainstream. This will help to bridge the gap between the innovators behind NFT technology, as well as those who are early investors into the NFT space.
According to sources within Meta, the idea to enter the NFT market is still in the planning stages. However, many engineers within the company are creating prototype interfaces to begin beta testing the feature.
This includes systems that would allow users to mint an NFT, and a marketplace for people to sell, and showcase, their NFT collection.
Whilst we are unable to truly know how far these ideas, and the engineering behind these features, truly are inside Meta headquarters. The CEO of both Instagram and Facebook have continued to offer illuminating talks on their attitudes towards NFTs, and how they might play a role in both platforms in the future.
This includes Instagram’s CEO Adam Mosseri stating that they are “currently exploring” how NFTs could reach a larger audience on the platform. As well as Mark Zuckerberg saying that the Metaverse would be interested in exploring how users could take digital ownership of the creations of products in their respective Metaverse spaces.
Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, have been gaining traction with other well-known online platforms in recent months. Twitter is developing on methods 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 (prices fluctuate dramatically) and lack of security (they’re routinely stolen despite assertions by some that they guarantee ownership), these assets will grow more valuable if current tech behemoths chose to support them.
An NFT is, at its core, a mechanism to claim ownership of a digital object like as 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 anybody to copy and paste it? NFTs, on the other hand, might become actual digital assets if corporations start enforcing ownership rights as indicated by them (at least on those platforms).
Embracing NFTs might also help Meta gain more clout in the Metaverse, which the firm has coined as a hazy idea of interconnected virtual worlds akin to the promises of VR universes made in the 1990s and prior. This might possibly increase the value and relevance of NFTs while also centralizing asset control.
Would you like to see NFTs come to the Metaverse, Facebook, or Instagram? Let us know in the comment section down below!
