Meta walked away from NFT less than a year after launching on Instagram and Facebook.
In a tweet thread Monday, the company’s head of trading and financial technology, Stephane Kasriel, said The company is shifting its focus.
“We learned a lot that will be applicable to the products we continue to build to support creators, people, and businesses in our apps, today and in the metaverse,” Kasriel wrote.
The move comes as Meta prepares for yet another layoff that will reportedly affect thousands of workers, after cutting its workforce by 13% in November. In the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg called 2023 “the year of efficiency” and promised to cut projects that aren’t performing well or that are deemed unimportant.
The deprioritization of NFTs has some on social media wondering whether the Metaverse multi-year and multi-billion dollar investment metaverse can soon be scaled again.
🚨 Meta will not support NFT on its platform.
With NFTs thrown off the ship… can the Meta metaverse survive?
– Chet Long (@RealChetBLong) March 13, 2023
The company’s metaverse division, Reality Labs, lost $13.7 billion in 2022, up from the $10.2 billion it lost in 2021. However, Zuckerberg remained supportive of the investment during the company’s latest earnings call.
Others added on Twitter that the move away from NFTs is a non-event as the company has barely made an impact in the space since launching NFT capabilities for apps last year.
Meta and instagram saying goodbye to NFT is like an awkward goodbye to a distant family friend at some Christmas party.
We didn’t know you were here but we hope you are well
— Mitch | MVHQ S21 (@classicmitchup) March 13, 2023
In September, the company opened its NFT feature to everyone in the US after testing it with a select group of users a few months earlier. When it was announced, Meta’s dive into the world of NFTs was seen as a boon for smaller blockchains like Polygon and Flow.
Meta followed in November by saying it would allow creators to create their own NFTs on Instagram and sell them through the platform directly to fans on the block, as well as the most popular blockchain for NFTs, Ethereum.
In a tweet thread Monday, Kasriel said the company will still support NFT creators who continue to use Instagram and Facebook to promote their work.
“Let me be clear: creating opportunities for creators and businesses to connect with fans and monetization remains a priority, and we will focus on areas where we can make an impact at scale,” he said.
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