On Tuesday, Elon Musk’s X wrote about a grand vision for the company in 2024, which includes launching peer-to-peer payments and more AI-powered tools. Amid all this, the company silently removed a feature for paid subscribers. They’re no longer able to set an NFT as a profile picture.
The feature was originally launched under Twitter’s previous management in January 2022. At that time, the company allowed Twitter Blue subscribers to set NFTs minted on Ethereum (ERC-721 or ERC-1155 tokens) as profile pictures, which eventually showed up as hexagons. Users could click/tap on the profile picture to know more about NFTs, including details like a collection of the NFT, the contract address, TokenID and the app with which it was minted.
X has now removed all descriptions about the NFT profile picture feature from its X Premium support page.
“As a Premium subscriber, you can create a customize [sic] your profile so you can show off the NFTs you own in a hex-shaped profile picture on your account. After a temporary connection to your crypto wallet that allows you to set up an NFT as your profile picture, your digital asset displays in a special hexagon shape that identifies you as the owner of that NFT,” the description about the feature read on the site previously (Internet Archive link).
People who had an NFT set as a profile picture still have hexagonal avatars. It’s not clear if X will eventually remove those as well.
The removal of the feature is not very surprising given other social networks have also wound down their NFT experiments. In 2022, Instagram and Facebook both started experimenting with showing and posting NFTs. However, Meta shut down the support for NFTs in March 2023.
While the value of some of the high-priced tokens such as the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) has plummeted from its peak, the NFT market has shown a sign of recovery in the last few months with trade volumes exceeding $1.6 billion according to NFT aggregator CryptoSlam.
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