Meta announced that it has begun testing a new feature that will allow creators on Instagram to create, showcase, and sell their own digital collectibles (NFTs) directly to fans, both on and off Instagram. In turn, Instagram users can support their favorite creators by buying these collectibles on the platform as well.

The company has been experimenting with NFTs on Facebook and Instagram since last year, but up until now, Instagram users have only been able to showcase their digital collectibles.

Now, Meta has developed a comprehensive toolkit so creators can make NFT collections and sell them to their followers and fans right on Instagram. The company noted that they are testing the new feature with a small group of creators in the USA and will expand to more countries soon.

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Meta itself will not charge fees for creating and selling NFTs until 2024. The company will even cover blockchain gas fees at launch, but no timeline is provided.

Instagram will leverage the Polygon blockchain to let users create and sell NFTs, while the decentralized data storage protocol Arweave will be used for the storage of its creators’ NFTs.

Meta is also expanding the types of NFTs one can showcase on Instagram to include videos as well as adding support for the Phantom wallet and Solana blockchain, in addition to the wallets and blockchains it already supports, such as MetaMask, Rainbow, Trust Wallet, Coinbase Wallet, Ethereum, Dapper Wallet, Polygon and Flow.

Moreover, Meta plans to pull information about select NFT collections, such as names and descriptions, from the NFT marketplace OpenSea.

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