Meta Expands NFT Support on Instagram to 100 Countries

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company is beginning its international expansion of their non-fungible token (NFT) support on its photo-sharing platform Instagram. He revealed this through the Meta newsroom post updated on Thursday, August 4.

Priorly, for the testing phase done last May, the display of NFTs on Instagram was only available to select creators in the United States. (Read more: Instagram Testing NFTs This Week; Facebook To Begin Soon)

Consequently, this recent expansion will allow users and businesses in more than 100 countries in Africa, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and the Americas to share their NFTs on Instagram. However, several creators in the Philippines reported that the feature is not yet available locally.

Further, Meta also announced that Coinbase Wallet and Dapper Wallet are now accepted as third-party wallets compatible for use. Following this, Instagram will also soon expand its supported blockchains and include Flow, a decentralized blockchain.

NFTs in Instagram

To access the  NFT functionality in the platform, users must connect a digital wallet to Instagram. Once done, users can now share NFTs and automatically tag both a creator and collector for attribution. Users can also share NFTs in their main Instagram Feed, Stories, or in messages. The platform also integrated a special effect when a user posts a digital collectible, the NFT will have a shimmer effect and can display public information, such as a description of the token.

As of writing, Instagram supports connections with third-party wallets including Rainbow, MetaMask, Trust Wallet, Coinbase Wallet and Dapper Wallet. Supported blockchains include Ethereum, Polygon and Flow. 

Instagram stressed that there are no fees associated with posting or sharing a digital collectible on the platform.

Meta web3 ventures

Aside from this NFT integration, Meta also officially began testing NFTs last month on its social media network Facebook. To date, according to Meta’s Product Manager Navdeep Singh, the testing of Polygon and Ethereum-based NFTs has already started among a selected group of creators on the platform. (Read more: Meta Launches NFT Display on Facebook)

Meta also plans to release virtual coins, tokens, and lending services on its apps according to their announcement last April. (Read more: Meta Exploring Non-Blockchain-Based Virtual Currency)

Mark Zuckerberg, is known for pushing their venture into the metaverse, in fact in October last year, he changed the company’s name to Meta to “bring the metaverse to life and help people connect, find communities and grow businesses.”

Although the current web3 ventures of the company seem to go smoothly, Meta also suffered several failed attempts with their cryptocurrency platform Diem Payment Network. (Read more: Facebook’s DIEM Formerly Known as Libra Shuts Down Without Ever Launching)

While Diem failed several times, Novi, Facebook’s digital wallet has successfully acquired a Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASP) license from the Banko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) in 2021. (Read more:  PayMaya and Facebook Novi Philippines Receive Virtual Currency Exchange License from the BSP)

This article is published on BitPinas: Meta Expands NFT Support on Instagram to 100 Countries

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