After announcing that it would be winding down its NFT-related projects last month, Meta is now informing Instagram users that their current, active NFTs in the app will be deactivated as of April 11th.
As you can see in this screenshot, shared by Ahmed Ghanem, Instagram users are now being shown an alert to let them know about the change, which will be one of the final steps in Meta moving away from NFTs, which, evidently, are ngmi.
Instagram was, at one stage, viewed as the logical home for Meta’s NFT push, with the company looking to get in on the NFT boom as a means to showcase digital ownership, which it sees as a key element of its evolving metaverse push.
Meta first launched NFTs on Instagram in May last year with selected creators able to access a new posting option that enabled them to share ‘digital collectibles’ in the app, with data connected linked to the relevant blockchain, via various providers.
Though even at that stage, Meta was already latching onto the tail end of the NFT fad, and since then, NFT sales have continued to crater, impacted by lack of interest, broader disruption in crypto markets, and the economic downturn.
Evidently, there actually wasn’t much value in JPEGs, long term – though there remains a very dedicated, engaged NFT community that’s still exchanging and interacting with NFTs, and looking for the next potential use case for the process.
And there may still be one. As noted, as the metaverse becomes a thing (if it does), that will open up all new use cases for digital ownership, and digital items, including artworks, could still become a more significant consideration in this next shift.
But the metaverse, as its own concept, has fallen out of favor for now too – though Meta’s still developing its next-level system, and it could still end up being a transformative shift, sometime in future.
In this respect, NFTs effectively proved the use case for digital ownership, so maybe, really, NFT enthusiasts are just too far ahead of the curve right now, and one day, they’ll be telling stories about how they were laughed at for pushing these types of projects which have since become commonplace.
Maybe. Regardless, right now, NFTs are not an investment, not a valuable or viable experiment for the most part, and likely not really worth your time.
And soon, they’ll be gone from IG and Meta entirely, as it refocuses on other things.
