NFT Ownership Platform Fractional Receives $20M From Paradigm
- Fractional has announced that it is rebranding to Tessera and has received new funding from Paradigm, a crypto investment firm.
- Paradigm has invested $20 million in Tessera, which it will use to hire new employees to the 24-membered team and also provide additional resources on a new protocol it’s developing.
Collective NFT ownership platform Fractional has announced that it is rebranding to Tessera and has received new funding from Paradigm, a crypto investment firm.
According to the announcement on Wednesday, Fractional closed a $20 million Series A fundraising round led by Paradigm and also confirmed its intentions to rebrand into Tessera. The NFT ownership platform allow enthusiasts to sell fractions of their non-fungible tokens.
Tessera founder and CEO Andy Chorlian confirmed that the funds will be used for adding more employees to the team, which consists of 24 members currently. Additionally, professionals belonging to the marketing and external-facing roles as well as developers and engineers will be hired.
“It was a really, really big barrier for a lot of our users, who are just so used to trading NFTs on OpenSea or any of these other marketplaces, and that level of education and trying to explain how all this works was just a step too far for a lot of people,”
Chorlian told Fortune.
The firm will use the funds provided by Paradigm to provide additional resources on a new protocol it’s developing and will also transform the digital pieces of a person’s NFT into NFTs themselves and not into ERC-20 digital tokens like USDT or USDC.
Furthermore, the fractional NFTs can be compared to the print of an original art piece as per Chorlian and will also provide for more simplication of the process of trading for those who know about NFTs but are not used to the concept of digital tokens.
“Really what is most exciting to us in general about this is, how do we make interesting connections with other people,” Chorlian said. “How do we empower artists and creators?”
Fractionalizing NFTs can be viewed as an investment move and the website of Tessera’s website confirms that one of the benefits of doing this include getting liquidity for an NFT without having to sell these blockchain-based tokens while also collecting fees from the people that buy fractions of your NFT.
According to Chorlian, Fractional (Tessera) was founded in 2021 and has since then facilitated $2 billion in total trading volume and hosts about 70,000 unique holders of fractional NFTs. The previous funding round of the platform took place in August 2021 where Fractional raised $7.6 million from Paradigm.
“As we grow into this next phase, the name Tessera feels more representative of our platform, which is all about giving people the ability to collect things they love and identify with,”
said a Tessera spokesperson.
Paradigm also invested $16 million in Hang which helps brands leverage NFTs to replace their existing membership and loyalty programs.
A crypto journalist with over 3 years of experience in DeFi, NFT, metaverse, etc. Parth has worked with major media outlets in the crypto and finance world and has gained experience and expertise in crypto culture after surviving bear and bull markets over the years.
