Meta discontinues NFT support on Facebook and Instagram less than a year after it started rolling out the feature on its platform. The update comes as the social network has laid off thousands of workers and shut down numerous projects in what Mark Zuckerberg called the company's "year of efficiency."
“We’re winding down digital collectibles (NFTs) for now to focus on other ways to support creators, people, and businesses,” wrote Stephane Kasriel, Meta’s Head of Commerce and Financial Technologies, in an updated message posted on Twitter. “We learned a ton that we’ll be able to apply to products we’re continuing to build to support creators, people, and businesses on our apps, both today and in the metaverse.”
He added that the company will instead focus on "monetization opps for Reels" and "messaging payments across Meta".
The update comes a year after Zuckerberg took the stage at SXSW to announce that Instagram is working on NFT support, which debuted last May. The company announced another major feature expansion in November, when it revealed plans to allow creators to mint and sell collectibles directly on Instagram.
But it's not the only once-ambitious initiative that has failed over the past year. In 2022, Meta also shut down its crypto wallet Novi, which was rumored to have NFT support on its roadmap. The company also cut projects from its Reality Labs division, which dealt with the metaverse, and a program that paid bonuses to the creators of Reels.