Meta’s Commerce & Fintech lead Stephane Kasriel has announced via Twitter that the company will wind down its work with digital collectable NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and focus on different ways to “support creators, people, and businesses.” The decision to scale back work on NFTs comes as the company, across the board, tries to work more efficiently due to a worsening economy.
Some product news: across the company, we're looking closely at what we prioritize to increase our focus. We’re winding down digital collectibles (NFTs) for now to focus on other ways to support creators, people, and businesses. 🧵[1/5]
— Stephane Kasriel (@skasriel) March 13, 2023
While creators and businesses will now no longer be able to use NFTs, Meta still wants to give them opportunities to connect to fans and make money. Kasriel said that to this end, the company will focus more on messaging and monetization in Reels. The firm will also streamline payments with Meta Pay and messaging payments across Meta.
The most likely reason that NFTs on Meta are going away is probably because people don’t realize they exist to begin with. The company has not long rolled out NFTs on its platform and people may have found them difficult to understand. Additionally, regulators could end up classifying NFTs as securities which would just make them more of a headache for Meta to handle.
With interest rates rising and companies cutting back on the crud they’ve been working on, we should see more experimental projects shelved. Once rate-cutting resumes and credit becomes more affordable maybe we’ll see the re-emergence of these experimental technologies or maybe companies will leave them shelved.
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