Facebook parent company Meta has enabled a group of US creators to show non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on their profiles.
Meta has launched digital collectibles support on Facebook with select creators and only in the USA, and has already begun a slow rollout, TechChrunch reported, citing a company spokesperson.
The news of the launch was shared by the product manager for Meta, Navdeep Singh on Thursday, along with several screenshots.
There will reportedly be a new tab on users’ profiles, under “digital collectibles.” The spokesperson is also quoted as saying that the sharing feature across Facebook and Instagram has not yet been launched, but that it is “coming soon.”
Furthermore, the selected creators will be able to connect their crypto wallets to Facebook profiles, and turn their NFTs into posts to share on their wall or elsewhere like they would any other post.
The news of the feature comes after CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that the company would be testing NFT support on Facebook.
In May, Zuckerberg announced that the company is starting to test digital collectibles on Instagram so creators and collectors can display their NFTs on their profiles. On this specific platform, NFTs minted on the Ethereum (ETH) and Polygon (MATIC) blockchains were supported at launch, with Solana (SOL) and Flow (FLOW) “coming soon.”
The third-party wallets compatible for use include Rainbow, MetaMask, and Trust Wallet, with Coinbase Wallet, Dapper, and Phantom also coming soon, they said in the same post.
“There will be no fees associated with posting or sharing a digital collectible on Instagram,” said the company.
It is not yet clear if the same applies to Facebook.
Cryptonews.com has reached out to Facebook for comment.
While announcing NFTs on Instagram, the CEO also said that the company has in plans “augmented reality NFTs on Instagram Stories via Spark AR so you can place digital art into physical spaces.”
The reactions to the announcement have varied from highly critical, over rather indifferent, to greatly supportive.
Still, a very specific type of criticism has followed Facebook ever since it launched into the all things meta.
Billy Huang, CEO and Co-founder of Luna Market, a metaverse/NFT branding and tech company, said in an emailed comment:
‘Meta doing NFTs is a way to control the narrative around free digital asset technology. NFTs built into their platform will probably be built with the intent of vendor lock-in which is dangerous for a free digital space in general.’
Meanwhile, also in May, Meta filed five trademark applications for a digital payments platform dubbed 'Meta Pay'. In a June 21 announcement, the company said that Facebook Pay is changing its name to Meta Pay. Also, Zuckerberg further shared the company’s thoughts on a single wallet for the metaverse.