The NFT will arrive soon, “in the next few months”, also on Instagram. Mark Zuckerberg said this during the Sxsw underway these days in Austin, Texas. There are not too many details but it is clear that the “non-fungible tokens”, able to certify the ownership of a digital object of any kind through the blockchain, could turn into a monetization pick for the different metaverse environments in the process of construction and of which Horizon Venues or Worlds are only the first stirrings.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Chickens
by Riccardo Luna
Last year the head of Instagram, the very close collaborator of Zuck Adam Mosseri, had already admitted that his team was “actively exploring” the world of NFT but that there were still no announcements to make. Now the announcements are there and follow the rumors of a couple of months ago regarding the integration of digital unique certificates on Facebook and Instagram. But what could be the directions?
The guide
Okay, but what’s the difference between metaverse and Web3?
by Andrea Daniele Signorelli
A bit like on Twitter, we could use an NFT as a profile picture, taking advantage of that prominent space almost as if it were a museum case. Then, as Zuckerberg explained, the idea is to allow “minting”, that is the possibility of creating (or rather, minting) a new original NFT in a simple way. Even simpler than it already is on platforms like OpenSea (but beware of scams). What could we do with it? Simple: transform a post, or even a story, into an NFT. The third step – anticipated weeks ago from Financial Times – it could be that of a marketplace, that is, a section reserved for selling, discovering and buying digital content related to the Instagram ecosystem or, even, importing those purchased from other platforms, to offer them a less specialized showcase of the exalted and speculators from NFT and infinitely wider.
Zuckerberg and the risk of making us like Putin
by Riccardo Luna
We could go further. The Verge suggests for example that allowing the issuance of original NFT could also not be linked to the purchase of a single post or a series of posts but for example to that of a pass to subscribe to a user’s profile and thus be allowed to view the his stories. In short, one of the payment methods for another project, that of subscription profiles, in the pipeline for some time. In all likelihood, these features will arrive later: we will start with more limited aspects such as, in fact, the importation of other NFTs and their use within the Instagram sections. However, they are also the least monetizable ones: OpenSea takes 2.5% of every transaction that takes place on its site, this means that there is a huge market to climb and little time to waste with feature all in all negligible.
However, in Zuckerberg’s long-term vision – what is likely to be understood in the coming months – there is also a underlying cultural element: if NFTs will be one of the ways through which to buy objects or experiences in the metaverse, there is a need for users to become a little more familiar with the underlying logic and that, at the same time, the sale, creation and purchase of tokens does not fungible exit from specialized platforms to become gestures similar to those with which you pay for an online subscription or an object on e-commerce sites.
To understand this, Zuckerberg painted the following scenario during the session at the Sxsw: that of clothes of your avatar to be minted as NFT and transported “to different places”, that is, on different platforms and metaverses. It is something that, despite all the ongoing discussions and certain logics to which the younger generations are basically already accustomed with in-app purchases of video games, must still make the leap into the common imagination.