Instagram Adds Flow Blockchain NFTs, FLOW Token Pumps 44%

Instagram is expanding its NFT initiative internationally to more than 100 countries, parent company Meta announced today, plus it is adding support for NFTs created on Flow blockchain. Now the FLOW token is pumping as a result.

FLOW is up almost 44% in the last 24 hours, per data from CoinGecko, with almost all of this increase since Meta’s announcement this morning. At the time of writing, FLOW is trading at $2.76 per token, with the latest price action bringing its 30-day gain to nearly 72%.

Instagram’s expanding integration allows collectors to showcase their verified Flow NFTs on their account on Meta’s photo sharing service. The initiative first launched in the USA to select users in May, and has now expanded to also include countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

The feature allows users to connect to a supported crypto wallet to prove ownership of NFT collectibles and choose which ones to display, with both the owner and original creator automatically attributed next to the asset.

An NFT is a blockchain token which serves as a declaration of ownership of an item, including digital goods such as profile pictures, artwork, collectibles, and video game items. The NFT market came to prominence in 2021, generating some 25 billion dollars worth of trading volume. Already in 2022, the market has given way north of 20 billion dollars on sale.

Flow was created by Dapper Labs and is best known for Dapper’s own sports NFT projects, including NBA top shot, NFL all dayand UFC strike. However, it is an open blockchain platform used by a number of other projects, including notable ones such as avatar creation Geniuses and the collectibles app for kids, Zigazoo.

Along with news of Flow support, Meta also announced that users can now connect to a Dapper Wallet or Coinbase Wallet as part of Instagram’s expanding Web3 support. It seems that Instagram’s NFT initiative is still not fully open to the public, but it is opening up to more.

In May, Meta announced that Instagram would begin integrating support for NFT collectibles starting with Ethereum and Polygon based assets. Ethereum is the leading blockchain network for NFTs, while Polygon is an Ethereum side chain which enables faster, cheaper and more energy-efficient transactions.

Instagram also plans to add support for Solana NFTs, as announced in May. In June, Instagram’s sister company Facebook became the equivalent started testing support for Ethereum and Polygon NFTs on profiles, and also revealed plans to add Flow and Solana support down the line.

Meta is pushing hard on what’s to come metaverseas the parent company of Instagram and Facebook changed name last autumn (from Facebook Inc.) when it revealed its grand vision for a next-generation internet navigated by avatars in immersive 3D spaces.

Blockchain networks and NFTs are expected to be part of an open, interoperable metaverse, and many crypto builders are developing the technology to enable this vision. Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has indicated that he is interested in enabling interoperable assets as part of his platform, but Meta has yet to detail how open the metaverse will really be.

Not everyone is keen on Facebook’s presence in what some hope will be a decentralized metaverse. Yat Siu, founder and chairman of notable metaverse investor Animoca Brands, told Decrypt last year that tech giants like Facebook and Tencent are a “threat” to an open, interoperable, blockchain-powered metaverse.

Facebook’s metaverse ambitions have also faced resistance from regulators. Last week, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) defendant Meta to try to stop the planned acquisition of startup Within, which makes the popular VR fitness app Supernatural.

“Meta would be one step closer to its ultimate goal of owning the entire ‘metaverse'” if allowed to buy the startup, regulators alleged in a filing.