New Delhi Social media giant Meta has announced that it will begin allowing creators to post digital collectibles such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to both Instagram and Facebook.
While this move has been in the works for some time, it comes at an opportune time for the industry, and could help revive interest from both creators and collectors.
Like the rest of the crypto market, the NFT market has also experienced a downturn over the past few months. According to data from blockchain tracking firm DappRadar, trading volume on OpenSea has dropped by 99% over the past four months. According to data from DappRadar, India’s WazirX NFT marketplace has also seen volumes drop by over 85% in the last 30 days.
OpenSea is the world’s largest NFT trading platform, while WazirX’s NFT Marketplace is the leading marketplace in India. According to CoinMarketCap, the recent slowdown in NFT transactions due to the ongoing crypto winter has wiped out around $800 billion in market capitalization in a single month. According to crypto research firm Chainalysis, in June, NFT sales hit a 12-month low and totaled over $1 billion. Industry experts said that although creators still can’t sell or mint NFTs on social media, putting them as a profile picture or post on the world’s two largest social networks could give the community a huge push.
“This will be good for creators. Facebook and Instagram have huge user bases, which will be good for NFT creators and will gain a lot of traction. It will enable them to build communities that are essential to the inherent value of NFTs Siddharth Sogni, founder and chief executive of Krebaco, a crypto analysis firm, said.
Kameswaran Elangovan, co-founder and chief operating officer of GuardianLink, an NFT service provider, said the convergence of social media and NFTs represents “the perfect amalgamation between the crowd-power of Web 2.0 and the transparency of Web 3″.
“It is important for any new technology and its manifestations to make a presence in the places where people move around. And right now, there’s no better place than social media.”
Facebook has 2.93 billion monthly active users (MAUs) as of June, Meta said in its quarterly earnings call in July.