Every subscription you pay,
paid back in $TESS.

01What it is

An ERC-20 token on Arc with a fixed supply. It does two things: it is what Tessera pays you in, and holding it raises the rate you are paid.

Every company on the shelf has a rate — the share of what you pay it that comes back to you. Netflix is 3%, Duolingo is 6%, and so on. When a claim of yours is approved, that percentage of the charge is worked out in dollars and paid to your wallet in $TESS, at the market price that day.

Most of the supply exists for exactly that. It is set aside at launch and paid out, claim by claim, to the people whose subscriptions actually run through Tessera.

02What it is not

• Not stock in the companies on the shelf. Paying Netflix does not make you a Netflix shareholder, and Netflix is not the one paying you. Tessera pays you, in its own token, out of a reserve anyone can watch.
• Not equity in Tessera. No dividend, no vote, no claim on the company or anything it owns. If Tessera is sold tomorrow, the token gets nothing from it.
• Not a thing we sell you. No sale, no pre-sale, no private round, no team allocation. There is nothing to buy from us at any price.
• Not propped up by us. We do not buy it back, we do not burn it, and we do not spend a penny of revenue defending its price.

03How you earn it

Send proof of a subscription you already pay: a photo of the charge on your statement and the line it shows up as. Once it is approved, the company's rate is applied to the charge, the dollar amount is turned into $TESS at that day's price, and it is sent from the payout reserve to your wallet.

Each company counts once per account, and every claim is checked before it counts toward anything. The terms say what gets a claim turned down.

04Before it trades

Tessera is open before $TESS trades. A claim approved before there is a market price has nothing to be priced in, so it is not paid yet — it waits at its dollar amount, and nothing about it is lost.

Once $TESS is trading, every claim that is waiting is paid at the market price, oldest approval first. Signing up early costs you nothing; you are simply paid on the first day there is something to pay you in.

05What holding it does

Your $TESS balance is read when a payout is worked out, and it decides the rate. No staking, no locking, no separate contract to approve — the tokens sit in your own wallet and you can move them whenever you like.

The boost applies across the whole shelf at once, so it counts on every subscription you run, not just one. And because you are paid in $TESS, what you earn counts toward your next tier.

Sell your $TESS and your rate drops back the moment your balance does. It is a rate on what you hold now, not a status you keep.

06Where payouts come from

One wallet, filled at launch with the payout share of the supply and published on this page. Every payout is a transfer out of it that you can open in a block explorer, so what has been paid and what is left can be counted without asking us.

Because claims are paid at the market price, a lower price means more $TESS per dollar, and the reserve runs down faster. If it is running down faster than it should, rates are cut before it runs out, and we say so here first. When the reserve is empty, payouts end. Nothing is minted to refill it.

07Where the supply goes

Two places, and neither of them is us.

No founder allocation, no team wallet, no advisor tranche, no vesting cliff twelve months out. Any allocation we held would be a pile of tokens we could sell, and you would have no way of knowing whether we were about to. Holding none removes the question.

The liquidity share goes into a $TESS/USDC pool on Uniswap on Arc at launch, so there is a market price from the first day. The token is not our income.

08Why Arc

Arc is a blockchain from Circle, built around USDC. Fees on it are paid in USDC, so the cost of moving your $TESS is a small, steady amount in dollars rather than a number that swings with some other coin.

Transactions on Arc are final in under a second, so a payout that lands in your wallet is done, not waiting on confirmations. And Arc uses the same addresses as Ethereum, so the wallet you get when you sign in, or one you already hold, works as it is.

It is also public. Block explorers and wallets read Arc independently of us, so the supply, the payout reserve and every payout can be checked by someone who believes nothing on this page, which is the correct way to read a page like this one.

Tessera is built on Arc. It is not made, run or endorsed by Circle.

09What we cannot promise

A token can go to zero, and plenty do. What you are paid is worked out in dollars on the day, but once it is in your wallet it is $TESS, and it is worth whatever the market says. A fixed supply is not a reason for a price to rise, and nothing here entitles you to a payment.

Rates and tiers can change. They are published here and in the terms, and if they move we say so on this page rather than quietly — but a rate that can be raised is a rate that can be cut, and you should read it that way.

Nothing on this page is investment advice, an offer, or a solicitation. We are describing a mechanism, not a return.

10What launch day looks like

Until every one of these is on this page, treat the token as not existing:

1. The contract addresshere and in the site footer, before anywhere else.
2. The payout reserve, on chainso what is left to pay out can be counted without asking us.
3. The $TESS/USDC poolon Uniswap on Arc, so there is a real price to pay claims at.
4. The first payouts senttransactions you can open in a block explorer.

Until then there is no contract, so anything calling itself the Tessera token is not it. We will never announce one in a direct message, and we will never ask you to send anything to a wallet.

11Questions