In the Instagram post, Chan, seen sipping from a mug that matches the statue’s color, playfully commented, “The more of me the better?” The statue’s design, with its flowing silver garment, looks like a mashup of ancient Roman Sculpture and the T-1000 from Terminator 2. According to Zuckerberg, the inspiration came from the former: he captioned the photo “bringing back the Roman tradition of making sculptures of your wife.”

The sculpture features a reflective silver robe wrapped around a blueish green figure that brings to mind a photoshop-smooth version of the weathered and oxidized copper of the Statue of Liberty in New York. The statue’s striking color and size led to a flurry of online comparisons to characters from “Avatar” and jokes about Zuckerberg being the ultimate “wife guy.”

Zuckerberg and Chan met in 2003 while both were students at Harvard. They have been married since 2012 and share three daughters.

Arsham has worked across sculpture, architecture, drawing and film to explore his concept of “fictional archaeology” He most recently opened the exhibition “Phases” at Fotografiska New York earlier this year and he has long been represented by Perrotin. Last month, Arsham was accused of violating national labor laws by employees of his studio, according to a complaint filed with the National Labor Relations Board.

Because Meta has not responded to requests for comment, it is unclear how much of the team has been cut, but there is confirmation of at least seven layoffs.

“You may have heard that Meta laid off 11,000 people last week. I was unfortunately one of them,” wrote Matthew Israel, former Commissions Lead at Open Arts, in a LinkedIn post.

According to communications on LinkedIn, it appears that Rafael Flores, the strategic programs manager; Anna Brümmer, the communications manager; Jennie Lamensdorf, partnerships lead; Dina Pugh, lead of strategy and operations; and Kristen Leung, the strategic programs manager, were taken off the team. Tina Vaz, the head of the department, appears to remain in her position.

Vaz left the Guggenheim, where she served as deputy director of global communications, to take this position at Meta in 2019.

The layoffs follow the news that Meta’s third-quarter income dropped by more than 50 percent, leading the company to make the decision to let go around 13 percent of its workforce.

The Open Arts team is the design and art branch of Meta. Founded in 2010, it was originally termed Facebook Open Arts. The team was in charge of commissioning artists for their offices; stewarded Meta’s art collection, which includes more than 1,000 site specific pieces; and supported art and tech collaborations for product development in the realm of VR, AR, AI, and NFTs.

Just this August, the Open Arts team announced a group of massive artist commissions for Meta’s new offices in New York. Baseera Khan, Timur Si-Qin, Esteban Cabeza de Baca and Heidi Howard, Liz Collins, and Matthew Kirk were among selected to do these projects.

Meanwhile, Meta’s Reality Labs department, which heads metaverse projects (including VR and AR product development), has been largely spared from the layoffs, despite reports that the department is hemorrhaging money. According to Business Insider, Meta spent $10.8 billion on Reality Labs in the first nine months of 2022; the department only brought in $1.4 billion during the same period.

Testers are able to connect their digital wallets to Instagram and/or Facebook, post their verified NFTs, and tag creators and collectors. Meta has not used the language “NFTs” in posts or statements about the new move, instead referring to “digital collectibles”.

So far, Ethereum and Polygon are the only blockchains supported, but Meta has said ti plan to later include Solana and Flow. The feature supports third-party wallets from Rainbow, MetaMask and Trust Wallet, with wallets from Coinbase, Dapper and Phantom to be rolled out later.

Digital collectible posts come with certain features: The post will have a shimmer effect, a checkmark, and can, but doesn’t have to, display public information about the NFT.

“It’s critical that our early efforts in this space empower diverse voices and that underrepresented groups have access to emerging digital assets like NFTs,” the Meta announcement read.

Accordingly, many of the early testers are Black. Some of the testers include actor/singer Jaden Smith, venture capitalist Gary Vaynerchuck, artist Jen Stark, actress Cynthia Erivo, influencer Michael Le, and several NFT projects, like Adam’s Bomb Squad, Boss Beauties, and Oseon World.

In the announcement, Meta also addressed social and environmental concerns and assured that users could report digital collectible posts that violated community guidelines.

“In addition, we understand that blockchain technology and NFTs raise important questions on sustainability,” read the announcement. “Meta will help reduce the emissions impact that might be associated with the display of digital collectibles on Instagram by purchasing renewable energy.”

The announcement did not mention a concurrent effort for Facebook’s counterpart initiative.

The move to test NFTs is significant. Thus far, the majority of the NFT community congregates on Twitter, which has rolled out some NFT compatibility features. Those features have yet to gain mainstream appeal.

Meta’s digital collectibles features may be intended to draw that community to their platforms. However, it raises the question about whether major Web 2.0 platforms will simply absorb the money making characteristics of Web 3.0 and blockchain technology and take the wind out of the vision for a decentralized internet.