Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has announced that it will be winding down its non-fungible token (NFT) operations on both social media services.
The move is part of a broader pullback from Web 3.0 technologies, as the company looks to concentrate on other ways to expand support for creators and businesses. Meta’s head of commerce and financial technologies, Stephane Kasriel, made the announcement on Twitter on Tuesday.
“We’re winding down digital collectibles (NFTs) for now to focus on other ways to support creators, people, and businesses,” Kasriel wrote in a Twitter thread.
The company plans to shift investments from NFTs to its payment service Meta Pay and other features that enable creators to earn money directly on platforms.
Meta started experimenting with NFTs on Instagram in May last year, then expanded the NFT features on the social media platform for creators across 100 countries in August.
However, the company’s other Web3 endeavor to grow its metaverse platform Horizon Worlds has been unsuccessful, and the company’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg declared that 2023 be a “year of efficiency” for the company during February’s Q4 earnings call.
Meta’s decision to wind down its NFT initiatives comes as global NFT sales have slumped to US$1 billion last month from US$4.3 billion in April 2022, according to Cryptoslam data.
Despite this, Amazon reportedly plans to launch an NFT marketplace next month, where users may be able to purchase digital tokens linked to real-world assets.
Meta’s spokesperson confirmed that the company will continue to focus on “areas where we can make impact at scale”.
The company aims to support creators, people, and businesses by enabling them to earn money directly on its platforms, as well as through Meta Pay and other features. The spokesperson did not provide any details about the timeline for winding down the NFT operations.
