Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg announced the beginning of the international expansion of digital collectibles on Instagram, following the initial test launch of the product in May. As part of the expansion, more people, creators, and businesses in more than 100 countries in Africa, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and the Americas will be able to share their NFTs on IG. This feature allows people to connect a digital wallet, share digital collectibles (NFTs), and automatically tag both a creator and collector for attribution. 

Also starting today, Coinbase Wallet and Dapper Wallet are now accepted as a third-party wallet compatible for use and Meta is expanding supported blockchains to include Flow, in addition to Ethereum and Polygon.

In addition to Mark’s post, here’s more information on the rollout and context on Meta’s work to expand access to web3 technology. Let us know if you have any questions. 

Additional context on how Meta i thinking about web3 tech: 

• This milestone reflects Meta’s continued work to expand access to web3 technology through NFTs, and support creators who want to monetize their work and build community with their fans and collectors. 
• Mark shared the following thoughts in May on the potential for this technology to benefit creators as part of his conversation with Tom Bilyeu: 
  • “We’re not just building technology. We’re trying to also help foster this ecosystem, because at the end of the day, we’re not going to build most of the content – by a long shot. The vast majority of it is going to get created by creators in the ecosystem. And so I think a big part of what we need to do is really lean into all of the different ways that creators could make money. So some of that will be things like supporting commerce, part of that will be NFTs and ownership around that…I just think the more different tools that creators have to be able to make money, the more they’re going to be able to do their work and hire people to join their team, to build out even more use cases. And that will propel all these platforms forward.”
• Across Meta, we will continue listening to feedback as we embark on this area of investment for the company and continue rolling out the product. We’ve already started to bring digital collectibles to Facebook, as well as allowing people to display and share their digital collectibles as AR stickers in Instagram Stories. 

Please find the NFT playbook here for a quick look at the sector.