• by Colin Kirkland , November 3, 2022

As part of its Creator Week, Meta announced on Wednesday that creators will soon be able to make their own digital collectibles -- non-fungible tokens (NFTs) -- and sell them directly to fans, both on and off Instagram.

This update will provide creators with an end-to-end toolkit for NFT production. 

Instagram users will therefore be able to purchase NFTs directly on the app via traditional in-app purchases across iOS and Android. The company says that while it continues to test the new features with a small group of creators in the U.S., it will not take a cut of creators’ revenues. 

Meta says it hopes to expand the NFT features to more countries in the future. 

While Polygon is the first official partner Meta has chosen for this feature, Meta is also expanding its showcasing capabilities to include video digital collectibles on Instagram and adding support for the Solana blockchain and Phantom wallet, in addition to the blockchains and wallets that it already supports. Lastly, information for select collections where the metadata has been enriched by OpenSea, such as collection name and descriptions, will now be available on Instagram.

“This is a big win for Web3 as this will allow for wider public adoption. This has the potential to do what Reddit has done, and perhaps even do more,” Billy Huang, CEO and co-founder of metaverse advertising company Insomnia Labs, told MediaPost. 

"I believe that the Instagram X Polygon partnership will be beneficial not only for average consumers but also for the native web3 community members,” Huang added.