Meta

Meta, formerly known as Facebook, has been making inroads into the non-fungible token (NFT) space for a while now.

This week, the company gave a major update on this mission, confirming that NFTs will go live on its Instagram platform.

Bringing NFTs to the Meta Family

Earlier this week, Meta announced that it would begin testing NFTs on Instagram Stories. The tests will be facilitated using Meta’s Spark AR augmented reality.

Speaking on the news, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained that the company is looking to expand tests for the NFTs, ensuring that creators will be able to display their tokens on Instagram regardless of where they are in the world.

The move will see Instagram join several social media giants in supporting NFTs. In January, Twitter rolled out NFT profile pictures for iOS users of its Twitter Blue service, who pay $2.99 a month to access the premium social media service. Users can connect different wallets to the service and use the NFTs as their profile pictures, in a few seconds.

Besides Instagram, Meta has also confirmed that Facebook will support NFTs as well. Zuckerberg explained that they are looking to begin tests with a small group of creators in the United States, so users can cross-post NFTs on Instagram and Facebook.

While Meta’s entry into the NFT space has been slower than many other platforms, the company has been making impressive strides nonetheless. In May, the company began testing digital collectibles on Instagram, giving the first signs that it would support NFTs.

Speaking with Impact Theory’s Tom Bilyeu, Zuckerberg explained that the move was the first major step toward allowing collectors and creators to display their NFTs on other apps that are part of the Meta family, including WhatsApp, Facebook, and Messenger.

Meta’s Rocky Metaverse Entry

While Facebook is making progress with its NFT and VR play, the company has run into some resistance with its broader metaverse play. In April, Meta announced the opening of Horizon Worlds – its metaverse and virtual reality platform – to a few creators, allowing them to sell digital items and collectibles. According to a blog post, Meta said that the testing phase would precede a larger rollout, as the company continues towards a more expansive metaverse.

Meta NFTs

While this was welcome news, prospective users quickly caught an unnerving detail: Meta is looking to take up to 47.5% of the proceeds off each transaction.

As the company’s breakdown shows, Meta is looking to take 30% of all items sold on Horizon Worlds through its Oculus virtual reality platform. The other 17.5% will go to the Meta App Store – making the total even more than Apple’s marketplace fees. Considering that OpenSea – the largest NFT marketplace in the world – charges 2.5% off each transaction, Meta’s price tag will be significantly more than what most NFT enthusiasts are used to.

There have been no indications that Meta is looking to change this pricing structure. However, if it maintains, there’s a question of how the company plans to attract NFT collectors.

Besides being a player in the metaverse, Meta is also looking to regulate the space. Earlier this month, the social media giant reportedly formed the Metaverse Standards Forum. Through the forum, Meta looks to foster interconnectivity among competing metaverse platforms and build standards for these platforms to operate.

The Forum includes companies like Meta, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Epic Games, and Nvidia. However, crypto-native metaverse platforms like The Sandbox and Decentraland – as well as tech industry giants like Apple – were conspicuously absent from the list.

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