It is no surprise that Twitter is hopping on board in the widespread adoption of blockchain and cryptocurrency. After all, its CEO Jack Dorsey is a major Bitcoin maximalist. He’s also the CEO of Square, a digital payments company that is expanding more into DeFi, Dapps, mining and more. The same way he has big plans for square, there is something brewing at Twitter as well!
Twitter hops on the NFT trend
Twitter released 140 free NFTs to 140 users in June this year. 140 to signify Twitter’s initial character limit per tweet.
Jack Dorsey also sold his first ever tweet as an NFT for $2.9 million or ₹21.7 crores! Jack donated 100% of the proceeds to GiveDirectly. GiveDirectly is a charitable organization that sends cash to families in Africa who are affected by COVID-19.
Latest feature in development
You may have seen some prominent crypto influencers showing off their NFTs as their profile picture. These animated pictures of avatars, monkeys and other authentic artwork does really catch our eye. Twitter picked up on this rising trend very quickly. The company decided to facilitate a more direct connection.
Although the new feature isn’t officially released yet, lots of beta testing is happening. It will enable users to open their wallet for changing their profile picture and select an NFT from their collection. These wallets would include Coinbase, Metamask and so on. The profile picture would also bear a mark of authenticity. The mark would be kind of like a cool verified symbol, except it would be the symbol of the blockchain upon which the NFT is created. You can take a peak of this video down below to see the feature.
The feature also includes a rollout of a “Collectible” tab. Wherein users can proudly showcase all the NFTs they possess. It seems as if owning NFTs is going to be the next form of social validation. If this really picks up, forget counting the number of likes on your tweet, people will be more interested in what pieces you own. There is also an underlying focus on digital avatars that ties into the concept of the metaverse.
Large Scale adoption of NFTs
This is going to be an interesting experiment for Twitter. Twitter isn’t the only one experimenting in this landscape. Instagram is working on a similar NFT display section. On the other hand Facebook is headlining the development of the Metaverse.
Although the feature isn’t live yet, we can safely predict a high success rate. Especially considering many of the crypto influencers and whales are most active on Twitter.
