NFT
The fractional NFT project Tessera and its sister project Escher will be shut down in the coming weeks, after the Paradigm-backed company said its financial situation and economic model would make it difficult to become profitable.
“We spent a long time carefully analyzing possible market scenarios, our corporate structure and our financial situation, and decided this was the best choice for our team and our investors,” co-founder Andy Chorlian wrote on Twitter. “When we really dug into the economic model for Escher, we saw that the goals we had to achieve to become profitable – compared to the time and resource costs to scale there – just didn’t make sense or didn’t make good business sense. “
Originally known as Fractional, Tessera lets users buy and sell tokens representing fractions of NFTs. The project sought to make it possible for anyone to own a share of even the most expensive NFTs.
Escher was a platform for collecting works of art in the form of virtual showrooms, where anyone could walk in and virtually explore the artist’s work.
The company had raised $20 million in a Series A round led by Paradigm in August 2022. Other investors included Uniswap Labs, E Girl Capital and Focus Labs.
“We wanted to make this decision while still in a financial position to do so responsibly, and ensure that employees are supported during this difficult transition,” Chorlian said.