Introducing Escher 🖼️ – by William M. Peaster

Metaversal is a Bankless newsletter for weekly level-ups on NFTs, virtual worlds, & collectibles

Dear Bankless Nation,

The Tessera team just introduced a new platform, Escher. 

Escher is a platform and marketplace aggregator for fine art editions, i.e. 1-of-X pieces like Mindlessness by Terrell Jones. 

With Escher, you’ll be able to access all of an artist’s work in one convenient place, plus easily discover and buy or sell fine art editions. 

For today’s post, let’s walk through what you can expect from Tessera’s latest release, which is timely considering how the open edition boom is driving tons of interest toward editioned cryptoart lately!

-WMP

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The team behind Tessera just announced the launch of Escher, a new platform focused on fine art editions. Set to go live on March 30th, Escher will offer a new singular and organized experience around the browsing, buying, and selling of digitally editioned art. 

The “artist-first and user-first” project will function as an aggregator to track editioned NFT mints and listings across the ecosystem, with the added benefit of a dedicated curation team that will work to elevate emerging and established artists alike.

In the past, there hasn’t been a unified place where artists and collectors can readily highlight and sell their NFT editions, and Escher aims to fill this gap. 

Escher will aggregate all editions by an artist, no matter what platform or smart contract the editions exist on. This unified UX will eliminate the need for collectors to jump around multiple platforms to view an artist’s complete body of editioned work, as has previously been required. 

Escher will also offer artist showrooms, which will be customizable and dedicated spaces where artists can showcase their editions as they please. Out of the gate, the platform will feature showrooms for over 25 artists, including Jack Butcher, Cath Simard, XCOPY, Grant Riven Yun, and Sarah Zucker. 

Lastly, Escher will be an open marketplace so anyone can use the platform to browse, buy, and sell artists’ editioned pieces through primary and secondary marketplace listings. 

Tessera complemented the Escher launch announcement by announcing that Escher Exclusives, a curated collection of limited editions from some of the most acclaimed artists in the NFT ecosystem, will also have its “Season 0” launch on March 30th. 

Each season this series will offer a rotating cast of artists, edition quantities, and themes, so these exclusive releases provide art collectors unique opportunities to experience the best digital artists in a single, iconic collection. 

To learn about and stay up-to-date on upcoming Exclusives drops, make sure you’re following the Escher Twitter account!

By aggregating editions and their secondary marketplace listings across different contracts, token standards, and platforms, Escher will become a unique and first-of-its-kind hub for defragmenting the cryptoeconomy’s art world. It’s also arriving at a time when open edition mints are becoming an increasingly go-to option for artists and collectors.

This timeliness, combined with Escher’s artist-first approach, its commitment to royalties when others are racing to 0%, and its commitment to quality, makes the platform well poised to become a mainstay in the cryptoart scene for the foreseeable future.

P.S. Remember how Coinbase just dropped the Base, Introduced free mint to commemorate the launch of its Base L2? Tessera’s doing a similiar free mint to commemorate the launch of Escher, and it’s open through tomorrow, March 8th, to 11:59AM EST if you’re interested.

William M. Peaster is a professional writer and creator of Metaversal—a Bankless newsletter focused on the emergence of NFTs in the cryptoeconomy. He’s also recently been contributing content to Bankless, JPG, and beyond!

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Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.

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