Snapchat experiments with the integration of NFT artwork into AR experiences

While the NFT hype has subsided significantly after the peak at the end of 2021, social platforms are still exploring ways to integrate NFTs, enabling users to view their digital artwork in new ways in their apps.

Snapchat seems to be the latest to jump on the NFT trend, with The Financial Times reporting that the company is investigating a new process that will allow users to convert their owned NFTs to AR lenses, which can then be set into their Snaps.

The process will essentially allow users to view three-dimensional versions of their NFTs, where appropriate, and use them as either a virtual face mask (a common use case for PFP projects), a background element, an additional object in the frame , etc.

It sounds like a fairly easy integration of NFTs, unlike for example Twitter, which has built a whole new profile display option for NFT art, or even Instagram, which is experimenting with a new profile element where users can view their owned objects.

While important, Snaps integration moves your viewing options into the AR tools, and this is where Snaps wants to connect to the next step of digital connectivity. While Meta focuses on VR, and its evolving metaverse experience, Snaps is focusing its future on the development of AR, and the integration of digital and physical worlds, in a number of ways.

In this sense, and given the expected boom in AR with the advent of AR glasses, Snaps NFT integration plan may actually be more significant than these other options. Instead of bridging what will be Web2 to Web3 applications, Snap is taking a step forward, which could do well to take advantage of the growing digital goods market in new ways, as opposed to attaching them to it. which are likely to be older systems.

And while the current NFT offerings may not end up being as big an item in the next phase as some may have thought (or hoped), there is clearly a solid business foundation for digital items, and buying and selling things like digital clothing for your avatars, tools that you can use across different games and worlds, digital jewelry and other items that can mean status and achievement.

This is already the case in existing meta-comparison rooms, with users in Fortnite and Roblox showing their personality and presence through different character skins and additions that reflect their skills and experience, in different ways.

Hand-drawn profile pictures feel like a misunderstood attempt to engage in this shift, but there will be a more advanced market for digital objects, at some point, which will become a major industry.

Snapchat may be looking to get ahead of this, and with AR-enabled digital elements, and further integration of the Bitmoji characters in the same way, it may help it stay ahead of the game in the next step.