An In-depth Look at the Platform Integrating Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs) on Twitter – Cryptonews

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Twitter is finally getting on the non-fungible token (NFT) hype, introducing the NFT profile pictures to its premium Twitter Blue service users. The integration of NFTs is supported by Quicknode, a Miami-based blockchain infrastructure, which recently completed a $35 million Series A funding round supported by top crypto VCs and angel investors. 

In 2021, the NFT market soared over 10,000% as the industry became a fantasy for mainstream investors. The industry gained appreciation from artists, celebrities, athletes, movie stars, and big media across the year, with personalities such as Snoop Dogg, Neymar, Mark Cuban, Megan Thee Stallion, Messi, and others purchasing their first pieces. Unsurprisingly, “NFT” was selected as the word of the year, last year, by Time. 

Kicking off the year, NFTs still remain hot despite the massive dip in the cryptocurrency market in January 2022. In light of the growing market, social media giant, Twitter Inc. rolled out a new feature for its Twitter Blue users on iOS allowing NFT owners to parade their artwork as their profile pictures in form of a “soft hexagon”, a statement from the team reads. The feature will only be available for Ethereum-based NFTs, with additional blockchains set to be added in the future, the statement adds. 

Simply put, NFTs are unique pieces of art, music, photos, digital trading cards, video clips, and any other form of digital media stored on an immutable blockchain. The NFTs provide verification representing ownership of the particular virtual asset. The most popular NFT projects include Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), CryptoKitties, Doodles, and CryptoPunks. 

A new path for ‘right clickers’

As alluded to, Quicknode and Twitter have partnered to introduce NFTs as profile pictures on the social media’s premium platform. The sudden craze for NFTs has come with its own perils as users continue to flaunt their NFTs on social media. If you are a frequent Twitter user, you’ve probably seen a number of profile pictures with a multi-colored ape, an 8-bit human character, or a penguin. While some of these art pieces actually belong to the owners of the NFT, there is a ton of profile pictures using NFTs that they do not own. 

These users simply right-click on the actual NFT image, save it, and upload it as their own. In an effort to identify the actual NFT owners, Twitter is introducing NFT verification on profile pictures, powered by Quicknode. This follows a successful Series A funding round by the latter, whereby they raised $35 million from top VCs in the blockchain space led by Tiger Global with participation from Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six, Soma Capital, Arrington XRP Capital, Crossbeam, and Anthony Pompliano.

“While demand for QuickNode’s platform as a provider of blockchain infrastructure continues to take off as more companies look to adopt blockchain as part of their product strategy, we’re excited to partner with platforms such as Twitter to deliver support for features like their recently launched NFT Profile Pictures,” a statement from Quicknode reads. “Through this new feature, we’ll help provide a means in which people on Twitter can show off the NFTs they own and be a part of its thriving community.”

The company graduated from Y Combinator in March 2021, services more than 2 billion requests per day for a community of nearly 20,000 developers, with a global multi-cloud presence in 15+ regions across 4 continents.

What’s on offer at Quicknode?

While the article focuses on the latest innovation in the NFT space, Quicknode offers users much more than NFT verification and a blockchain infrastructure service. The platform also provides an API that lets you find any NFT, verify ownership, and pull transaction history, and key collection information, without sorting through individual smart contracts. This enables platforms to quickly sort out through NFTs to offer their users the best options on sale. Notwithstanding, the platform also allows users to verify the ownership of an NFT (off Twitter) in real-time. 

With the growth of NFTs, finding details verifying the project a given NFT belongs to, past transaction history, and other valuable details is a critical tool to determine an item’s value. With Quicknode, users and projects can easily pull this information and get full information on which collection the NFT is found and the creator of the NFT. This allows you to find similar NFTs and separate them from the bunch. 

Some of the blockchains supported by Quicknode include Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Fantom, Gnosis, Arbitrum, Optimism, Terra, and Polygon. 

Final words

There’s still much more work to do to ensure NFTs remain usable by the owners only. The latest partnership between Twitter and Quicknode is only the first step in ensuring only the NFTs from verified collections make it as profile pictures. According to one BAYC owner, the current verification model still has a loophole as users can still upload NFTs from unverified collections. This means that someone can just right-click and save any NFT, mint it as a fresh one and then use it as their profile picture. 

While no official communication has been made from Twitter Inc., Quicknode stated their willingness to find better verification models to ensure only NFTs from a verified collection can be used as a profile picture on the social media platform.