Polygon Token Surges Following Instagram NFT Integration

Published: Nov 6, 2022
Written By:
Chisom Maduonuorah
Chisom Maduonuorah
Contributor

Polygon, one of the most popular blockchains, is seeing a price bump for its native MATIC token following a partnership with Instagram– the social media app has announced that users will soon be able to mint, display, and sell non-fungible tokens (NFTs) hosted on the Polygon blockchain.

  • NFTs are cryptographic records stored on a blockchain that no one can replicate. They’re used to represent digital items like audio files, video files, and artwork.

MATIC’s price has risen 35% since Wednesday, the 2nd of November, 2022, when Instagram announced the new feature, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Instagram says it has begun testing the NFT feature with a small group of creators in the US and aims to roll it out for users across the globe “soon.” Users will get an end-to-end toolkit to create, display, and sell NFTs hosted on the Polygon blockchain to their followers.

It shouldn’t be surprising that Polygon’s integration with Instagram is driving up the price of the blockchain’s native token. Instagram is one of the top-five social media apps globally, with over 1.2 billion monthly active users. If only a fraction of that user base decides to buy NFTs, they’ll considerably boost the demand for MATIC, the Polygon blockchain’s native token.

Besides, many Instagram users will interact with NFTs for the first time on the Polygon blockchain, and some could convert into long-term users. In the meantime, Polygon will be the exclusive blockchain for selling NFTs on Instagram– the social media app signaled its plans to integrate with more blockchains in the future.

“This move represents a remarkable milestone in the evolution of Instagram’s existing NFT functionality and a natural next step to bring Web3 to the mainstream,” said Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal. “The value added to the creator economy is unmatchable and championing verifiable digital ownership on a platform with such reach will help us further our goal of onboarding the next billion users to Web3.”

Before now, several other notable companies had chosen Polygon to integrate blockchain features into their apps. They include the stock trading app Robinhood, which launched a Polygon-based crypto wallet, and payment processing platform Stripe, which began supporting crypto payouts on the Polygon network this April.

Chisom Maduonuorah
Chisom Maduonuorah

Chisom Maduonuorah is a writer passionate about tech startups, venture capital, the global stock markets, and emerging financial markets like cryptocurrency. When not writing, you can find him staring into the sky pondering what life is about.

Chisom Maduonuorah
Chisom Maduonuorah
Contributor
Chisom Maduonuorah is a writer passionate about tech startups, venture capital, the global stock markets, and emerging financial markets like cryptocurrency. When not writing, you can find him staring into the sky pondering what life is about.