Every day, creators inspire people and push culture forward around the world. With the incredible opportunity of blockchain technology, they can now leverage new tools to earn income, and fans can support their favorite creators by purchasing digital collectibles – art, images and videos, music or trading cards – as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Starting this week, select creators and collectors can share their digital collectibles on Instagram.

Creators are using new technologies like NFTs to take more control over their work, their relationship with their fans, and how they can monetize. At Meta, we’re looking at what creators are already doing across our technologies in order to improve the experience, help them create more monetization opportunities, and bring NFTs to a broader audience.

Introducing Digital Collectibles

We’re beginning to test digital collectibles with a handful of U.S. creators and collectors who will be able to share NFTs on Instagram that they have created or bought. This feature includes:

• Connecting a digital wallet. Once connected, creators and collectors will have the ability to choose which NFTs from their wallet they would like to share on Instagram. 

• Sharing digital collectibles. Once a creator or collector posts a digital collectible, it will have a shimmer effect and can display public information, such as a description of the NFT. Posts will also be visible on their profile.
• Automatic tagging of both the creator and collector. The creator and collector can be automatically attributed in the digital collectible post (subject to their privacy settings).

We collect and organize public data from open blockchains, such as Ethereum, to provide this feature. From this public blockchain data, we can