Instagram explores web3 space
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Instagram introduced digital collectibles on app so that creators and collectors can display their NFTs.
But behind the scene, they’ve looked at different ideas in the crypto space.
One was to turn Instagram into web3-powered stock photo marketplace. We created a prototype for this with Instagram and Solana team.
Product plan
a. User-side: allow any Instagram user to click a button to allow some or all of their photos to be licensed with one-click by viewers, for a fee, using Solana to handle payments and attribution.
b. Buyer-side: allow any buyer to click on any Instagram photo or video in the upper right corner and license it. If they don't have any SOL, it prompts them to check out with a credit card and then set up a wallet for further use.
c. Crucially, many corporate users will have pre-existing cards on file with Meta for advertising, so you can just debit those.
d. Make the license incredibly simple by default: "use this image an unlimited number of times on a single domain". That is, the buyer inputs a domain they're licensing it for (like example.com) and gets out a URL (like instagram.com/licensedphoto.jpg?
user=john&site=examp
le.com&solanakey=8098adflkjas).
e. Embedding that unique URL on a page at example.com gives all caching, tracking, and licensing. The Solana blockchain is used to provide global attribution for images and video.
f. You might also need to embed solana-web3.js on the page, but it's better if you can do it with just the hotlinked image.
g. You'll need great Instagram search to make these photos and videos findable by buyers, but that probably already exists.
h. As a v3, you could even put the two-sided Instagram NFT marketplace order book itself on-chain.
Prototype
A few wireframes and product-mapping later, we landed on the following prototype.
The product didn’t make it to release. Meta stepped away from NFTs less than a year after launching them on Instagram and Facebook as well.