Everything You Should Know About Instagram’s Digital Collectibles

Instagram, the popular photo and video-sharing social media platform, has recently launched a new feature called “digital collectibles.” Instagram shared its plans to enter the NFT display and marketplace game around March 2022, but they took tangible steps around May. First rolled out to a limited group of people, the collectibles on Instagram have the ability to be shared, created, bought, and sold on Instagram. Blockchain technology is used to record who owns them.

So how does this work? First, you connect one or multiple digital wallets to your Instagram account. Currently, Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, and Flow blockchains are supported. To allow you to connect your third-party digital wallet to Instagram, they collect and organize public blockchain data and link it to your Instagram account when you connect your wallet.

After going through some requirements, if you’d like, you can create digital collectibles. When you create collectibles, you can add them to your wallet or sell them on Instagram. At this point, you can only buy digital collectibles created on Instagram but can view all others. After you’ve purchased collectibles, they’ll be added to your connected wallet. You can buy digital collectibles on Instagram using payment methods stored in your Apple App Store or Google Play Store accounts, and you cannot use cryptocurrency.

So far, Instagram is in favor of the heated royalties discussion. You are able to set royalties to collectibles created on Instagram, and Meta has no involvement in commission payments for collectibles listed on third-party marketplaces. 

When you buy a digital collectible on Instagram, you can only resell the collectible on third-party marketplaces and not on Instagram. Oh, and yes, Apple is taking its 30% off these purchases.

Instagram actually had its own pfp-like avatars similar to Horizon world ones. There have been rumors of an acquisition or partnership with a notable NFT collection to bring ‘cuter’ characters into Instagram’s metaverse.

The first drop happened with DrifterShoots in early November, which sold out in seconds. The second drop was partnering with Vinnie Hager for an edition of 25 of his work “Lollygagging,” which sold out in less than a second. Of course, these are not big collections, and Instagram can sell a million collectibles for low prices if they want to.

By starting with known popular artists and low quantities, they are making sure to have good headlines and test the waters before jumping in. Some other artists who will be doing drops with Instagram collectibles are Amber Vittoria, Dave Krugman, Refik Anadol, Diana Sinclair, Eric Rubens, Jason Seife, Sara Baumann, Olive Allen, and Ilse Valfre.

This update has the potential to unlock micropayments and creator tips into Instagram, which has been behind in rewarding creators who usually get paid via partnerships. Micropayments have been important in rewarding creators, for example, with TikTok, the most used social media platform of 2022. Twitter is also trying to figure out a way to enable payments without paying 30% to Apple.

From whichever angle you look, Instagram has the potential to teach and create a seamless buying experience for all its 1.26 billion users. You can dive into their privacy policy and make your own judgment about the collectibles on Instagram and if it fits your vision of what you want web3 to look like.