On April 24th Amazon will launch its NFT platform. According to this unconfirmed rumor, Amazon Prime customers in the US will be able to trade 15 NFT collections. The bigger news is that Amazon is set to dive into the 'twin NFT' market, where NFT's are 'tied' to physical assets. 

It is not yet known if Amazon will make use of Ethereum or a Layer 2 on Ethereum. It even might build its own blockchain, which would of course be a slight disappointment to crypto people. Also, it appears that Amazon won't integrate the platform with crypto wallets from the onset. In other words, customers will still pay with their credit cards.

Twin NFT's

We discussed earlier that Amazon will dive into the NFT market. Now, more details have become apparent. It is said that Amazon will tie the sale of real products to an accompanying NFT. This is the concept of 'twin NFT's'. Whut? 

NFT's originally are stand-alone: you own a certificate of ownership of a digital item in a database or on-chain. Traditionally, NFT's have nothing to do with real world items. Visual artist Damien Hirst even made a point of this by facing customers of one of his collections with a dilemma: they had to choose between the physical painting or the NFT, not both (spoiler: half of the buyers of the ten thousand painting collection kept the NFT, so Hirst had to literally burn 5000 paintings). 

As mentioned, Amazon plans to pair NFT's to the physical items they ship. These so-called twin NFTs are sometimes also called phygital NFTs (I know, ugh). For example, you buy a pair of sneakers and as a package deal get the NFT proving you own the sneaker, both in physical and digital form. A chip in the physical sneaker contains the proof.

But why? Well, our real-world lives and online lives are increasingly intertwined. If I buy a set of sneakers, why not also allow its twin NFT to grant me access to a fitness app? Or to a fitness center in 'meat space'?

The dream of any marketeer

In time, when these will be integrated with crypto wallets, a company like Amazon will have a database of unique identifiers of their account holders. A digital wallet shows customers' purchases across different platforms, which is of course the dream of any marketeer. It will allow Amazon to better target their customers.

Instagram will halt NFT pilot

It's ironic that Instagram announced that it will pause their pilot project which allowed certain creators to create and sell their art as NFT's. It comes as a surprise, as Instagram and Facebook are committed on a Metaverse future, and more and more companies are jumping aboard the NFT ship.