We last heard back in January that Meta is exploring an NFT marketplace that it could launch on Facebook and Instagram. It seems like the rumors are true, and Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, has confirmed that NFTs will be available on Instagram “in the near term.”

Engadget reports that Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, recently spoke at the SXSW event, where he confirmed that the new digital collectibles would soon arrive on Instagram. Zuckerberg reportedly said that “We're working on bringing NFTs to Instagram in the near term.”

While the CEO didn’t offer any detail on how the NFTs could show up and work on the platform, we assume that creators and artists will be able to show off their portfolio in a similar fashion to images. It’s unclear how it’ll all work, and whether Instagram will allow creators to mint new NFTs and sell them. Zuckerberg also said that "I'm not ready to kind of announce exactly what that's going to be today. But over the next several months, the ability to bring some of your NFTs in, hopefully over time be able to mint things within that environment.”

At the event, Zuckerberg also hinted that NFTs could play a major role in the future of the metaverse platform. “I would hope that you know, the clothing that your avatar is wearing in the metaverse, you know, can be basically minted as an NFT and you can take it between your different places,” he said. “There's like a bunch of technical things that need to get worked out before that'll really be seamless to happen.”

The news isn’t too surprising, given that this isn’t the first time we see the social network giant talk about exploring ways to implement NFTs into its platforms, and we’ll likely hear and see more in the future.