Twitter Blue introduces NFT profile pictures for subscribed iOS users

Twitter Blue has rolled out a new feature to allow users to show off their non-fungible token (NFT) on their profile picture.

The feature is currently only available to Twitter Blue subscribers on iOS, but Twitter has informed ZDNet that Android and web will follow as the company continues build on the feature.

When users choose to use an NFT for their profile picture, it is displayed as a hexagonal-shaped image and will be viewable across all platforms to all Twitter users.

“We see Twitter as the discovery platform for all things crypto, including NFTs. The NFT conversation on Twitter is thriving with 255.6 million tweets globally and continues to rapidly grow,” Twitter told ZDNet.

“As many people’s first interaction with crypto happens on Twitter, we want to make it easier for them to interact with the community, participate in the thriving NFT conversation, and take a leap into the world of digital assets directly on Twitter — enter NFT Profile Pictures. 

“Authenticity around NFT ownership is important to the crypto community and with NFT Profile Pictures, we’re providing a way for people to prove ownership of their NFTs and support those making this art.”

To select their NFT of choice, users simply go to their profile picture and change their picture as they normally would. Here, there’ll be the option to select NFT, which will require users to connect their supported crypto wallet to their Twitter Blue account.

The crypto wallets that are currently supported are Argent, Coinbase Wallet, Ledger Live, MetaMask, Rainbow, and Trust Wallet.

Twitter noted that it only supports static JPEG and PNG NFTs minted on the Ethereum blockchain, for example, ERC-721 and ERC-1155 tokens.

According to Twitter, once live, other Twitter users can click on the NFT profile pictures to see information about the artist, their collection, provenance, and whether a project or collection has been verified by OpenSea or another third-party marketplace.

“We recognise that NFTs are a powerful monetisation tool for creators and want to support those making this art by making it easier than ever for them to participate in the promise of an evolving, decentralised internet, directly on Twitter,” Twitter said.

While Twitter Blue explained the feature is to highlight verified NFTs, it has been flagged by Adam Hollander on his Twitter feed that users can add any NFT in their collection as a profile picture.

“That means someone can just right-click-save any NFT, mint it, and then use it as their PFP (profile picture),” Hollander wrote.

In a response to this, Twitter said: “We don’t want to gatekeep NFT collections that might not necessarily be verified by a certain marketplace.”

“We wanted to give customers an easier way to see NFT details directly from someone’s profile picture and at the same time have the ability to explore the contract address more easily,” the company continued.

On the same day, popular NFT marketplace OpenSea confirmed an outage that affected its API, causing problems for multiple sites that use it to display NFTs.

Several people, including one Twitter user, Jane Manchun Wong, reported that Twitter uses OpenSea’s API for loading NFTs and due to the outage, Twitter’s NFT feature was down.

But when ZDNet asked whether Twitter was impacted by the outage, the response from the company was, “No, we have not”.

An OpenSea spokesperson said the outage occurred at 6:05am PT and by 8:30am PT, the outage was resolved. But their own status update page shows the outage lasted far longer, with programmatic access to the API being fully restored by about 3:30pm PT.

The outage comes a week after OpenSea had patched critical security issues that allowed attackers to steal cryptocurrency wallet funds in its NFT marketplace. 

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