Image credit:The verge

Imagine if you could turn your profile pictures into NFTs and sell them straight up on your social media account. Interesting right? Well, Instagram has hopped on the train of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs as it's called to allow creators and collectors to explore more of the metaverse. And here's everything you need to know as an artist or a creator.

What are NFTs on Instagram?

NFTs on Instagram allow users to display NFTs arts (digital collectibles) on their profile pictures that would also be visible in their stories, feeds, and messages. The digital collectibles will be displayed similarly to tagged profiles and products. Hence, clicking on the icon will show the NFT details like the name of the creator and owner. However, As a creator/ owner, you'd first have to plug in your crypto wallets to prove ownership of the NFT. 

In a recent video announcement, Adam Mosseri, CEO of Instagram, said the pilot program will feature a small number of NFT enthusiasts from the United States to understand the community and the feasibility of the project. “One of the reasons we’re starting small is we want to make sure that we can learn from the community." He said. "We want to make sure that we work out how to embrace those tenets of distributed trust and power, even though we are a centralized platform.”

The company will release more functionality related to NFTs in the future once it gets feedback from its initial testing.

Who are those that can post NFTs on Instagram?

Influencers, collectors, and creators, especially artists can post, promote and sell NFTs art on Instagram and make a living for themselves.

However, they are to use the selected blockchains such as the popular Ethereum and the less-known Polygon to showcase their NFTs on Instagram. Smaller blockchains like Solana and Flow will be added later. The launch will also allow the use of third-party wallets such as Rainbow, MetaMask, and Trust Wallet.

Although Instagram would not be the first platform to launch the NFTs feature, the microblogging site Twitter, in January, introduced NFTs on the platform as hexagon-shaped profile pictures limited to only premium users; an advancement many companies and celebrities jumped on. However, In contrast with Twitter, Instagram would not charge users to upload and share digital collectibles on their account.

Moreso, the Meta Group CEO Mark Zuckerberg made it known in a video that similar functionality will be coming to Facebook soon and possibly to other Meta apps in the future.