Instagram NFTs are coming soon, here’s how that may look like

2022-04-08, 09:16

Here are the top ways that Instagram may implement NFTs onto the platform:

· Creating their own NFT marketplace or using other sources.

· Sell filters for posts and stories as NFTs, banking on the exclusivity and status aspects that NFTs bring to digital culture.

· Attach social media posts to NFTs as decentralized proof of intellectual property when content goes viral and gets shared uncontrollably across millions of accounts.

· NFT-based personal identities allowing users to migrate between platforms such as Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus apps with ease.

At the last Austin, Texas’s South by Southwest (SXSW) event in March 2022, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company will be implementing NFTs onto the platform in the near future.

“We are working on bringing NFTs to Instagram in the near term [...] I’m not ready to announce exactly what that’s going to be today, but, over the next several months, the ability to bring some of your NFTs in, and hopefully over time be able to mint things within that environment,” Zuckerberg said during an interview.

Although Zuckerberg has yet to provide any more details following his statement on the event, we can definitely begin to conjecture what NFTs for Instagram may look like, with a few examples based on other implementations in the general crypto ecosystem.

With that in mind, this article provides the most likely ways that Instagram NFTs will be implemented onto the social media.

An Instagram NFT Marketplace

OpenSea’s marketplace displaying Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs. Source: CoinDesk

That might be the safest bet out of all of them. Wherever there is an NFT project, or crypto companies that involve NFTs, there is an NFT marketplace connected to them. The main example of that is OpenSea, which holds the biggest NFT marketplace in the world for projects such as Decentraland, Cryptopunks, Bored Apes and Somnium Space.

With Instagram, Meta has essentially two paths to follow - they can hold their own native marketplace within the platform or connect to other marketplaces. Given Meta’s extreme software leverage as a trillion-dollar tech company, the first option is far more likely. The company can even take a similar strategy to that of Twitter, by allowing users to purchase NFT characters that can be used as avatars for their profile images.

However, given that Instagram is a much more visually based platform than Twitter’s social media, there are a few other opportunities that Instagram can take advantage of to leverage its new NFT technology.

Instagram NFTs as filters

Samples of Instagram face filters. Source: The Verge.

One of the biggest NFT advocates in the world and founder of NFT project VeeFriends, investor Gary Vaynerchuk often compares NFTs with our physical status and identity symbols, with fashion as the main example. Much like high brand shoes, clothes and accessories, NFTs could be the equivalent of our digital identity.

But before NFTs can become a symbol of status, what if they become a symbol of entertainment and beauty for Instagram NFTs? At the moment, all filters available through Instagram Stories mode are free to use. Users can hire developers and purchase different animations outside of Instagram but, once they are on the platform, it’s an all-you-can-grab buffet for the most popular styles and animations.

If Instagram soon adds NFT functions to the platform, combined with a marketplace, people may be able to purchase and become exclusive owners of these filters. Once someone adds a boomerang video with, say, shiny golden bunny years, a tag could be attached to the content to make followers aware that the person is using an exclusive NFT. As Gary Vaynerchuk himself likes to point out; if people are interested in the “blue checkmarks” which show if an account is verified or not, why wouldn’t they be for other forms of status symbols?

Intellectual property of Instagram content

Do you know who created the “Nyan Cat” gif? Of course, most people don’t have a clue, but it was recently sold as an NFT so we can know for certain who the property’s owner is. Source: Tecnoblog.

This is an issue as old as the internet itself; someone makes a viral meme or video, it gets spread around the internet and repackaged as the original content of other accounts. A few days later, and most people have no idea where that content originated from, with the creator behind it receiving no rewards for having created such a popular piece of entertainment.

NFTs in general, and especially on social media like Instagram, can change that for good. When someone makes a post of whatever it is, could be a video for actual viral purposes or a simple photo like most people on Instagram do, the content can come with its own NFT address minted if the person chooses so. Therefore, if it gets spread around the internet, the owner can a) receive transactional rewards in case the NFT is open for duplicates and b) prove that they are the actual owner of the piece whenever they wish, with official confirmation from Instagram.

Of course, this is easier said than done. Although crypto and NFTs, in general, are becoming increasingly accepted in mainstream society, there are no regulatory directives in place related to NFTs and intellectual property that could hold in a court of law. But until then, it surely helps to hold proof in a digital community that you are indeed the owner of your popular property.

Digital identity for metaverse ecosystems

After all, Facebook did change its name to “Meta” for a reason; to encompass the company’s new goal of bringing the metaverse dream to reality. The topic of using NFTs for personal identities in the digital world has been a frequent discussion over the past couple of years, and one that will become more frequent as new companies and projects engage in creating their own metaverse spheres.

As of now, no company would find NFT IDs more useful than Meta; with five major applications on their hands, including “Oculus” which drives the metaverse plans, and over 4 billion users worldwide, NFT IDs would allow users to easily cross lands between one virtual world and the next without much hassle. The NFT avatars, accessories, filters and such that one buys on Instagram, for instance, can be available for the same NFT identity on their profile for Horizon Worlds - Meta’s current beta-phase metaverse social media project.

An NFT personal identitiy could also eliminate the need for users to log in or sign up using their cellphones and emails, making social media and metaverse ecosystems truly decentralized. However, given that Meta is an absolute tech behemoth with a global monopoly in users and immense capital, decentralization is unlikely. But if they manage to keep people signing up to services without having to message our phones or emails, sounds like a good deal either way!

Author: Gate.io Researcher: Victor Bastos
* This article represents only the views of the researcher and does not constitute any investment suggestions.
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