Introducing tessera.co, Tessera Marketplace, and the Tessera Protocol

Just three months after announcing our Series A fundraise and rebrand to Tessera, we’re back to announce the launch of three new products:

• Tessera.co — a new platform for collective ownership of NFTs
• Tessera Marketplace — a Secondary Marketplace for Raes on tessera.co
• Tessera Protocol — decentralized smart contract infrastructure for collective ownership and governance of NFTs

How did we get here?

In early 2021, my cofounder Nejc and I created Fractional (now Tessera) — a platform, an organization, and a vision for a world where you can own anything online, with anyone. Following the successful launch of fractional.art, a vibrant community sprung up to do cool shit together, and we quickly discovered that communities want to collectively own and govern historic digital collectibles.

Since then we have been hard at work, honing our focus to make it easier than ever for people to collectively own the things they love online. With the launch of these three products, we continue on our mission to be THE ultimate destination for collective ownership.

Tessera.co

Today, we are extremely hyped to bring you tessera.co, a platform enabling people to come together and own the world’s most sought after digital collectibles.

Tessera.co enables unique ownership and governance experiences via hand-curated selection of culturally significant and historic pieces of internet history, inviting everyone to own and govern NFTs, together.

What you need to know:

• Tessera.co is launching with CryptoPunk #4847
• 1000 Raes will available for purchase
• The auction for collective ownership of Vault 1 featuring CryptoPunk #4847 begins today, Tuesday December 6th at 12:00p ET

How it works

• When a collector transfers an NFT into a Tessera Vault, the smart contract automatically mints a predetermined number of Raes
• A Rae, short for the plural form of Tessera (Tesserae), is a type of NFT that represents collective ownership and governance of a Vaulted NFT
• Raes enable unique experiences for users to recognize, form, join, and participate in communities and causes they care about
• At launch, auctions for Raes will be held as Last Price Dutch Auctions

We are committed to giving the people what they want, and when it comes to tessera.co, we look forward to continually dropping rare and culturally significant digital collectibles in addition to new features and mechanisms.

Tessera Marketplace

To ensure users have a seamless end-to-end experience when buying or listing their Raes, we are also thrilled to announce the launch of the Tessera Marketplace, a no frills, zero fee marketplace that allows users to buy and sell all types of NFTs.

Tessera Marketplace will initially launch on tessera.co, enabling users to buy and list Raes on the Secondary Market within each Vault on tessera.co. Additionally, anyone will be able to buy and list other types of NFTs on select NFT marketplace aggregators coming soon!

Tessera Protocol

In our relentless commitment to contributing to the Web3 movement at large, last but not least we are pleased to announce the Tessera Protocol, a new piece of public infrastructure within the NFT ecosystem. The Tessera Protocol is composed of interrelated smart contracts that run autonomously on the Ethereum blockchain and allow for a user to transfer an NFT to a non-custodial smart contract wallet (a Tessera Vault) where it is custodied and held in a trustless, permissionless, and decentralized manner.

The protocol serves as a building block for the collective ownership community. In addition to allowing any smart contract developers to build on top of it, the Protocol enables even more utility for vaulted NFTs including the minting and distribution of Raes as well as the reconstitution of vaulted NFTs.

The Tessera protocol enables non-custodial collective ownership and governance and permits each community to determine how it can experience collective ownership and governance.

An early example of the Tessera Protocol at work can be seen with our recent experiment: Nounlets, a product inviting users to come together in the collective ownership and governance of a Noun. This approach leveraged the decentralized protocol to democratize access to the NounsDAO community and enabled the selected delegate to participate in governance within the Nouns ecosystem.

On Royalties

Royalties are a complex subject that is rightly top-of-mind for the Web3 community. On one hand, royalties are extremely challenging, if not impossible, to enforce on-chain. At the same time, they are an incredibly powerful tool for creators to receive the recurring recognition they deserve and one of the most compelling reasons artists sell their work as NFTs.

We are continually evaluating the landscape of existing tools while exploring new ways to elevate and empower artists for their works. Every time we launch a new product or contribute to the development of open-source protocols, we are committed to navigating royalties with artists as a top priority while balancing technical limitations, implementation practicality, and industry-wide constraints.

When it comes to NFTs featured on tessera.co, our current plan is to honor royalties on initial sales on a case-by-case basis as a means by which to ensure that artists and creators receive the royalties they have set for their artworks. This means that artists and creators will receive their royalty in the same way they would as if it were sold on OpenSea or any other royalty-honoring marketplace. Additionally, the Tessera Marketplace will honor royalties set by all types of NFTs.

As it stands today, Raes and Vault buyouts will not have royalties. This is because Raes are an entirely new type of NFT and owning a Rae is fundamentally different from owning the underlying NFT.

While this is our approach to royalties today, we are committed to continuously designing a system that is not only exciting for collectors but also empowering for creators. We always welcome questions, thoughts, and feedback on everything we do! Don’t be shy to reach out to us in our Discord or shoot us a DM on Twitter.

Closing Thoughts

We are more bullish than ever on products powered by Web3 infrastructure and remain fiercely committed to becoming the ultimate destination for collective ownership.

Thank you for continuing to ride with us. We are humbled and hyped to invite everyone to own what they love, together.

🫡,

Andy + Team Tessera