Two years after Twitter introduced its hexagonal NFT avatars: as reported by TechCrunch and confirmed by many users, the social media platform has quietly shut down the feature and reverted all existing NFT avatars to standard ones.

Twitter's NFT avatars debuted in January 2022 as an option for Twitter Blue subscribers; NFT avatars were also given a hexagonal frame to distinguish them from the functionally identical JPGs we use. Twitter was one of the only mainstream platforms to adopt NFT, and the move to integrate NFT was a moment of validation for those on the Internet who were following the trend.

Removal of NFT avatar support was done without warning: the removal of NFT avatar support was done without warning, and references to NFT avatars were removed from Twitter Premium's support page. via Wayback Machine, in October 2023, the following It was written.

NFT profile picture: add NFT as one of several ways to customize your profile, allowing you to show off the NFT you own with a hexagonal profile picture of your account. When you temporarily connect to a crypto wallet and set an NFT as your profile picture, your digital assets will be displayed in the form of a special hexagon, indicating that you are the owner of that NFT.

TechCrunch reports that the hexagonal NFT avatar frame was initially in place after the change, but has since been removed, according to nftnow's Twitter account.

The reaction of NFT boosters to the change has been predictable: surprise, disappointment, confusion, and faint hope from eager optimists that it could just mean that Twitter owner Elon Musk is planning another "better" system. If so, he has offered no hint as to what it might be: there has been no official comment from either Mr. Musk or Twitter as to why NFT's avatar support has been discontinued.

It could be as simple as NFT fatigue: after the 2023 crash that rendered many NFTs worthless, the NFT market showed some slight activity, but floor prices, the lowest prices for NFTs in the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection, fell again, still appears to have fallen short of the highs reached in mid-2022.

It is also possible that Twitter is trying to avoid future headaches. Lawsuits against celebrities who have peddled various NFT collections, including Paris Hilton, Justin Bieber, and Ronaldo, continue to mount, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission may also be considering tightening its NFT regulations: in September 2023, the SEC will order the creator of the Stoner Cats NFT was charged with "conducting an unregistered offering of crypto asset securities. [For now, we can only speculate. When I contacted Twitter for more information, I got the customary "I'm busy right now, please check back later" auto-reply (at least it's better than a poop emoji). Whatever the reason, I would call this the first smart move Twitter has made in a very long time: they didn't expect that paying for avatars would become widely accepted, but they also didn't expect horse armor to become a billion dollar earner in the gaming industry. Given that, it is gratifying that this whole idea was shot down once and for all.