How to use a verified NFT as your profile photo on Twitter

Twitter has been an NFT battleground for a while now, with cryptocurrency investors hosting Spaces to talk about the future of the technology and lauding big purchases while everyone else makes “right-click save” jokes.

But now, NFT owners will be able to prove ownership of their NFTs and use them as verified profile photos as part of a new partnership between Twitter and NFT marketplace OpenSea. By connecting a cryptocurrency wallet directly to their Twitter accounts, anyone with an NFT (and a Twitter Blue subscription) can show it off with a fancy new hexagonal profile photo shape and a special NFT metadata page.

If you own a cool NFT (hopefully one that isn’t stolen from a YouTuber, incredible racist, or stolen and racist) and want to flex your crypto art on Twitter, connecting your wallet and verifying your NFT is super simple.

How to use your verified NFT as your Twitter profile pic

There are a few prerequisites for using Twitter’s new NFT verification tool.

First, you need to have an active subscription to Twitter Blue, the platform’s paid profile option that grants users access to premium features like an “Undo Tweet button” and organized folders for bookmarks.

You’ll also need to be using an iOS device — for whatever reason this new feature is only available on the iOS mobile app right now.

Lastly, your NFT needs to be stored in one of the following cryptocurrency wallets:

• Argent
• Coinbase Wallet
• Ledger Live
• MetaMask
• Rainbow
• Trust Wallet

You need to have the app for your go-to wallet installed on your phone for a smooth connection with Twitter.

If you have all the right tools, adding your verified NFT to your profile only takes a couple of minutes.

• From your profile page in the iOS Twitter app, tap on the “Edit profile” button to the right of your profile photo.
• On the “Edit profile” page, tap on the camera icon over your profile photo.
• Tap “Choose NFT.”
• If this is your first time connecting a cryptocurrency wallet to your Twitter account, you may be served a Twitter Blue Labs explanation of the feature. Tap the “Connect my wallet” button below.
• On the next page, select the wallet host you’d like to connect to your Twitter account from the list.
• Once you make that selection, Twitter should automatically connect with the app you selected and ask for permission to view your public wallet address and generate a verification request message to your wallet address. You’ll be asked to confirm you hold the private keys of your public crypto address and to complete a signing request which will include your Twitter handle. Make sure the signing requests the twitter.com domain to avoid giving anyone else access to your wallet by accident. Follow the on-screen instructions in the Twitter app to complete the connection.
• Once your wallet is connected, you’ll be able to view a gallery of all the NFTs in that wallet on Twitter. Tap the NFT you’d like to use as your profile photo, tap “Done,” and your NFT should appear as your profile photo with that shiny new hexagon-shaped border.

Anyone browsing Twitter, on mobile or desktop, will be able to see this hexagon-shaped profile photo and know that the user is the verified owner of that NFT. Anyone can click on a verified NFT profile photo to learn more about the NFT using its data on OpenSea.

Right now, you cannot connect multiple crypto wallets to your Twitter account at the same time. You’ll need to pick a different wallet option when you hit the menu mentioned above and your other wallet will automatically be disconnected.

If you sell or transfer the NFT in your profile picture, the image will remain but your profile photo will revert to a circle design instead of a hexagonal one.

Something to think about...

While this process works smoothly, some folks in the NFT community on Twitter have already pointed out issues with the verification process and the visibility of that information on a profile.

Someone could save an impressive, rare NFT from a popular collection, secretly mint that image as an NFT in a less-visible collection on OpenSea away from prying eyes, and pass it off as their own with the hexagonal profile photo. Twitter is communicating with OpenSea to make sure the NFT is owned by a user, but there isn’t anything in place to check for duplicates or fraudulent NFTs being used.

Of course, that information pane mentioned above would have all the details needed to verify the NFT. If it’s from a weird, false collection, that pane would say so. But a lot of folks feel like no one is going to look that far and will take people at their word with the hexagonal pic.

What can Twitter do to solve this issue? They could change the feature to only be compatible with verified collections on OpenSea, removing any doubt of the authenticity for any NFT shown on Twitter. But, this would obviously cut out a lot of people from using the feature — anyone who wants to show off a neat NFT that isn’t a part of a major verified collection.

The Twitter Blue team has not publically responded to these concerns yet.