Mark Zuckerberg’s recent announcement of Instagram hosting NFT sent the crypto community into a tizzy. In March 2022 at the South by Southwest [SXSW] conference, Zuckerberg said, “Hopefully, in the next few months, you’ll be able to mint NFTs within Instagram.”Prior to this, Adam Mosseri, the head of the social networking platform had shared that it was “definitely actively exploring NFTs”.
Proponents believe this might be the turning point as the popular social media platform has a user base of more than a billion people. In fact, analysts from Deutsche Bank went on to predict that the addition of blockchain-based digital works of art on Instagram can lead to an influx of millions of new users and possibly generate billions in revenue for the social media giant.
Until now, OpenSea managed to remain the undisputed king. With their 1.4 million users and trading volume worth $23 billion, they are at the top of the NFT game. In Jan 2022 alone, the platform saw $5 million worth of NFT sales. But with the introduction of these unique digital tokens on Instagram, Opensea might finally meet its match.
One cannot deny the fact that the NFT marketplace is an extremely lucrative place as seen from its widespread adoption by firms around the world. So, it’s understandable why a social networking site decides to plunge into the highly competitive NFT market.
Instagram will top 2 billion monthly active users in 2023
Besides experts from Deutsche Bank envisioned that Instagram will have 2.2 billion monthly active users in 2023. According to their estimates, even if a mere 2 percent of those users start trading NFTs, it would open up a marketplace of 44 million people. This is roughly 31 times more users than Open sea.
Earlier this year, a new NFT platform for Instagram called Everlens went live. The platform championed itself as the first NFT marketplace dedicated to social networks, allowing over 1.4 billion Instagram users to connect to the Everlens NFT marketplace and trade their posts for NFTs.
It uses the ELEN cryptocurrency as the main token to power the marketplace, enabling users to create, buy, sell, swap, and display a wide range of unique digital artifacts.