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If you’re a Facebook or Instagram user in the United States, you can now share your non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Isn’t that good news?
Meta announced on Thursday, September 29 that the company now supports NFT sharing for U.S. users of Facebook and Instagram but only as it pertains to digital collectibles on the Ethereum, Polygon, and Flow blockchains. Solana NFT collectors may soon gain that privilege.
Facebook and Instagram support several different crypto wallet connections including MetaMask, Coinbase Wallet, Rainbow, Dapper Wallet, and Trust Wallet.
The first Meta platform to support NFT integration was Instagram. The company announced in May this year that Instagram users could share NFTs minted on Ethereum and Polygon. In June, the company added NFT support for Facebook. In both cases, support was for a limited number of users in the U.S.
On Thursday, August 4, Meta began its expansion for NFT support to 100 countries.
The NFT Market Has Declined in 2022
The NFT market picked up in 2021 as NFT investors began speculating on digital art. However, the market has seen a five-month straight slump since April this year. NFT sales are down 60 percent from the second quarter to the third quarter of 2022.
Much of that decline has taken place on the Ethereum blockchain. NFT sales on Ethereum are down 90 percent since January. By contrast, Solana’s share of the NFT market has gone up 7 percent in six weeks.
That increase in market share is likely due to Ethereum’s sharp decline in NFT sales.
In June, global NFT sales were around $879 million. In July, they had fallen to $647.23 million. The average sale value has also fallen from $511 to $115, as of August 4.
In January 2022, global NFT sales were up to $4.78 billion. Unique buyers were more than double what they were six months later. On top of that, transactions fell from 9.36 million transactions in January to 5.6 million transactions in July.
While Meta supports the display of NFTs on user profiles, the company has yet to introduce ways for platform users to buy, sell, or trade NFTs.
According to Dappradar, OpenSea is the leading NFT marketplace by 30-day trade volume. OpenSea allows trades on the Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana blockchains. Solana’s Magic Eden, which expanded to Ethereum in August, is the second highest ranking NFT marketplace. X2Y2, on Ethereum, ranks third. BloctoBay, on Flow, and Rarible, on Ethereum and Tezos, rank fourth and fifth, respectively.
OpenSea’s 30-day trading volume is down 29.56 percent while Magic Eden’s is up 99.3 percent, according to Dappradar. Rarible’s is up a whopping 2,800 percent.
