Instagram NFTs Pilot Could Launch as Early as Today

Instagram could announce a new pilot for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as early as today, with four blockchains supported, report Says.

Only a handful of collectors based in the U.S. would initially have access to NFT functionality, according to CoinDesk.

The report also reveals that collectibles on four major blockchains would be supported.

Along with Ethereum, NFTs minted on Polygon, Solana and Flow are also set to be available.

Instagram is owned by Meta — the company formerly known as Facebook — and it’s set to support major crypto wallets including MetaMask.

The report notes that this would enable users to prove they own rare NFTs, and flaunt them on their profiles.

While Twitter users can only use NFTs as a profile picture if they pay a monthly subscription, this feature is reportedly going to be free on Insta.

Will Instagram NFTs Catch on?

As previously reported, Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed that support for NFTs is coming to Instagram — however, his announcement was rather light on detail.

The million-dollar question now is whether Insta’s arrival into the increasingly crowded NFT market would unseat OpenSea, which remains the world’s biggest platform for crypto collectibles.

Deutsche Bank previously reported that Instagram could attract millions of new consumers to the NFT space — and conservatively estimated that 44 million people on the social network would use these new features by next year.

That’s “significantly higher” than the 1.4 million people who use OpenSea.

However, success is far from guaranteed.

Coinbase NFT announced that it was opening up the beta version of its marketplace to the public last week — but on-chain data suggested that signups were a bit low, with fewer than 150 people registering on the first day.