Non-fungible tokens, most prominently known as NFTs, are sweeping across industries and shortly becoming, next to the metaverse, a marketable new revenue stream and apt form of commodifying assets. Meta is the newest player in the space, taking the NFT concept to a more consumer-facing level via creative propositions and potential digital marketplace aspirations.
Meta insiders discussed these new revelations with Financial Times, underscoring how several groups with both Instagram and Facebook are developing internal workloads for NFT minting. These programs would also allow creators to showcase their work across social media, in addition to potentially even selling them via Meta's own marketplace.
Although still very much in its infancy, Meta's aspirations could have both good and bad repercussions for its users. Sure, the NFT craze (for those who are invested) will only bolster the appeal for social media-bred tokens, but it leaves open a nasty doorway for the potential of scams and illicit behavior.
It's a slippery slope, one that businesses far and wide are adopting despite the various pressures from consumers who know the negatives. Aside from its impact on people financially, there are also environmental concerns that literally outweigh the NFT boom with everlasting damage on our planet, but none of these outlooks has yet slowed its growth.
According to the Guardian, NFTs have amassed a whopping $22 billion global market in 2021 alone. With its own marketplace to fuel the books and (hopefully) creativity, maybe Meta can opt to redefine the NFT push, but it's clearly all substantiated by monetary gain. A Meta-led NFT Marketplace could see massive strides in the company's long-term metaverse applications, allowing it digitized storefronts that would undoubtedly see immense traffic as well as gains.
Currently, OpenSea sits at the very precipice of NFT storefronts, raking in several hundreds of millions off of its over 10,000 products sold last year, per Statista. The next closest NFT "marketplace" is Axie Infinity, a crypto-gaming platform that allows users to exchange tokens via the Lunacian Express, itself of which is more so metaverse-based as opposed to a general storefront.
How exactly Meta's NFT marketplace would function remains to be seen, but it would most likely push to be a combination of a metaverse attraction and art museum marketplace. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sees the value not only in applying metaverse to its social media platforms but utilizing NFTs and blockchain to bolster its position in the space.
Instagram itself would make for a major NFT landscape, given its already well-rounded platform situated in showcasing art, fashion, leisure, and (most importantly) ads. As such, the social media site has already been devising a way for users to display NFTs via the platform, but thus far, no major marketplace considerations have been made.
Both Twitter and Reddit have likewise leaped into the ring, with the former pushing for its own NFT library for users while the latter has unveiled its own NFT avatar collection. Even TikTok bought into the craze with its own creator-led NFT collection, but the proposition seemingly fell flat with many of these valued artists backing out of the deal.
Will Meta dominate in the NFT space? Probably, if the right technology and the right people are involved. Novi, the digital wallet application now set under Facebook, debuted last October and is most likely a key aspect behind Meta's push into the NFT blockchain equation. But, in the end, much like its high aspirations with metaverse applications, it all comes down to functionality.
