Can Instagram become a new cultural center of NFT tokens?
Bogdan LashchenkoInstagram and NFT
Instagram is a social network that was released on October 6, 2010. One of the most social platforms is more than 12 years old and it continues to develop and grow. Its unique feature was a focus on images. It is based on a simple idea of the developers — users have to have a comfortable capability to share their photos.
Despite their success not being overwhelming initially, the popularity of Instagram was growing every year. Now, when the world has started developing around blockchain technologies and the term “artistic creativity” includes not just paintings made in real life but NFT tokens from various artists, Instagram decided to use the situation. As a result, Instagram will have the capability to post your non-fungible tokens, which are already available at some resources, staying beyond NFT marketplaces.
The company Meta headed by Mark Zuckerberg who is fanatical about the topic of the development of the metaverse started testing this function last year. A particular group of people who were mostly interested in using non-fungible tokens and fit the test group received access to the innovation.
The chosen users received an opportunity to connect their Instagram account to Ethereum purses and demonstrate the NFT tokes they bought someday on their page. Users liked this function and it has become popular lately.
The community together with the top management of Instagram considers a reason that this innovation can bring a wider audience to art that is called non-fungible tokens due to the large coverage of the social platform. That’s why Instagram has introduced new functions, due to which artists can publish their items and sell them right on the platform.
Considering a large audience that includes more than 2,000,000,000 monthly active users, the addition of NFT can raise digital art to a new level and help everyone make more money. Besides, this network can become a road to the world of Web3 technologies, part of which non-fungible tokens have become, for many people, however, it does not make you open your crypto wallet because payments can proceed with the help of fiat currencies.
The new functions, according to Meta’s idea, should attract the Web3 audience to Instagram and social media fans should get to know the Web3 world but there are drawbacks to this scheme. The experienced collectors of NFT tokens might not be interested in buying assets that will be sold on the Web2 platform.
It is worth noting the level of the commission in this case. Marketplaces like OpenSea have a 10% commission but mobile applications on Google play will have a 15% commission, AppStore will raise this commission even to 30%. In such a way, sellers will lose a bigger part of their profit, which might push them away.
Non-fungible tokens mean the full uniqueness and the absence of analogs, so you will not be able to sell them on a few platforms at the same time. For this reason, it will be logical to assume that between a few places to sell, NFT artists will choose OpenSea rather than Instagram for their profit.
The creators of the mobile application, probably, will be able to find some loopholes that will not leave artists without earnings, however, they will face legal issues like it was with Epic Games. The last ones did this scheme in 2020 and there is no Fortnite on Google Play and AppStore now, the outcome of which the developers lost almost all income on the mobile market, having suffered colossal losses.
The Instagram marketing
Marketing will help Instagram become not only a social platform but a marketplace for NFT tokens. Meta managed to attract a few famous NFT artists. They include Isaac Wright (Drifter Shoots), Refik Anadol, Amber Vittoria, Dave Krugman, Mika Johnson, Maliha Abidi, and Bobby Stoney.
They have shown that the line between Web2 and Web3 technologies can be erased while being on Instagram. Artists published their works on Instagram and showed the world that the world of art can exist not only at offline exhibitions but in the online space, and the Meta social network can be used not only to share your photos but ideas and art.
However, it is still in the early stage of its development and we can’t say for sure whether the administration of the platform can make Instagram a new marketplace that will unite people around the NFT art. Such marketing decisions are considered to be PR moves by people and are not always well received by them.
The management of Instagram wants to make it possible to share NFT tokens in the same way as regular photos. At the same time, non-fungible images can be displayed in a separate tab as was realized with the Reels section.
Instagram decided to realize the idea with the Polygon blockchain. What is this network?
The Polygon network was chosen as a blockchain, in which NFT tokens will be circulating. With its help, the administration of the social network wants to make Instagram some kind of a funnel for Web2 brands that tend to go to the Web3 world.
The partnership of Instagram with Polygon might be effective because similar partnership acts with blockchain developers were successful for such famous brands as Nike, Starbucks, and even Reddit. The last one, by the way, managed to integrate non-fungible tokens into its forum, which created lots of hype among Reddit users. Also, Polygon expanded so much that it started breaking its records, which is reflected by the numbers provided by the analytical platform Nansen.
The remarkable thing is that many members of the NFT market choose Polygon and some of them go for this blockchain, leaving the previous ones. For example, the famous Solana marketplace, Y00ts decided to add the Polygon blockchain to its website. DeLabs, which owns Y00ts, in its turn, received a development grant of $3,000,000 from Polygon.
The analytical platform Nansen states that Polygon has 3 times more daily transactions than Ethereum. It is worth noting that Ethereum is the most popular network for exchanging non-fungible tokens and this indicator means that Polygon is something truly interesting.
According to Nansen, about 823,000 unique wallets appear on the blockchain, which was chosen by Instagram. The trading value on Polygon's secondary market is very low compared to Ethereum at the same time because ETH is famous for “the blue chips” of the NFT world trading there. The remarkable thing is that some projects realized on the Polygon blockchain decided to change the NFT term to “digital collectible items”. In such a way, they want to improve branding and attract more people because this slang is more understandable for newcomers.
Conclusion
Considering all the above-mentioned, let’s try to answer the question “Can Instagram become a new cultural center of NFT tokens?”. To achieve this goal, a wide user base is necessary to use the platform for daily exchanges, which will surpass the numbers of the biggest NFT marketplace, Open Sea.
It is obvious that they are still very far from achieving this goal, however, given that the number of users of the social platform exceeds 2,000,000,000, they should not bother with the base. The company only has to get them to know the world of non-fungible tokens and in this case, the trading values, popularity, and the title of “The main NFT-tokens marketplace” will appear.
It is worth noting that the majority of people launch Instagram only to watch entertaining content or chat with their friends, and the forced exposure to the NFT world may turn users away or have a negative impact on the time of adoption of non-fungible tokens. In the case of the main competitor of Instagram, OpenSea, this question is valid because the interested people who want to invest in NFT tokens come there. In the case of Instagram, things are quite the opposite.
Generally, the social platform made by Meta can become a center of the exhibitions of non-fungible tokens and a good marketplace, however, it will be pretty difficult to take the title of the best place for token purchases away from OpenSea. If you consider the time limits and ask: “Will Instagram be able to achieve a big success in the sector of NFT tokens in the upcoming years?”, we will answer negatively because the platform still has a lot to develop in this direction.
Bogdan Lashchenko – content manager at EgamersWorld.Bogdan has been working at EGamersWorld since 2023. Joining the company, he began fillin the site with information, news and events.