A Brief Analysis of Tensor: Can TNSR Continue the Wealth Creation Miracle of the Solana Ecosystem?

Written by: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily

On the evening of April 8, Beijing time, Tensor, a leading NFT trading platform in the Solana ecosystem, officially launched its governance token TNSR.

On the first day of TGE, TNSR was listed on several mainstream exchanges including Binance, OKX, and Coinbase. According to OKX, TNSR reached a high of 2.6 USDT after its launch, and as of the time of writing, it is reported at 1.72 USDT.

A Solana Version of Blur?

The official launch of Tensor can be traced back to July 2022.

In March 2023, Tensor completed a $3 million funding round led by Placeholder, with participation from Solana Ventures, Alliance DAO, Big Brain Holdings, and two co-founders of Solana, Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal.

In the same month, Tensor launched three rounds of incentive activities (Seasons 1, 2, and 3). Initially, in Season 1, it distributed "treasure chest" rewards with airdrop expectations to all active NFT trading users within the Solana ecosystem. Subsequently, in Seasons 2 and 3, it provided the same "treasure chest" incentives to users who placed bids, listed, or market made on the Tensor platform.

Clearly, this approach largely emulates similar projects like Blur in the Ethereum ecosystem. Tensor does not shy away from this comparison; in an interview with Tech Crunch, Tensor co-founder Ilja Moisejevs stated, "We are two similar yet different platforms."

Just as Blur gradually captured market share from OpenSea in the Ethereum ecosystem, Tensor has also achieved significant trading volume in the Solana ecosystem. According to Flipside data, Tensor is now the largest NFT market by trading volume in the Solana ecosystem, even holding a long-term market share of 70%.

An Overview of the TNSR Token Economic Model

Alongside the TGE, Tensor also announced an overview of the TNSR token economic model. In short, the utility of TNSR primarily lies in protocol governance, with a total supply of 1 billion tokens. The initial distribution is as follows:

• 550 million (55%) TNSR allocated to the community, with 12.5% for initial airdrops, and the remaining 42.5% for incentive programs, liquidity provision, and grants beneficial to the Tensor ecosystem;
• 270 million (27%) TNSR allocated to core contributors, with this portion locked for one year and then released linearly over three years;
• 90 million (9%) TNSR allocated to investors and advisors, with this portion also locked for one year and then released linearly over three years;
• 90 million (9%) TNSR reserved for future fundraising and development.

Odaily Note: TNSR Distribution

Odaily Note: TNSR Unlocking and Circulation

Regarding the specific design of the airdrop, Tensor did not provide much detail, only mentioning that "users who help develop the Tensor protocol and holders of Tensorians are eligible for airdrops," and that "the amount of airdrop users can receive is proportional to their usage of the Tensor protocol in Seasons 1, 2, and 3."

Eligible addresses can claim airdrop rewards at any time within 180 days from the start of the airdrop on the Tensor Foundation's official website. According to community feedback, the minimum airdrop will distribute 420 TNSR, meaning that even low-tier addresses will see a considerable return of at least several hundred dollars.

Can TNSR Continue the Wealth Creation Miracle?

With the rising popularity of the Solana ecosystem and heightened market expectations for projects within this ecosystem, several leading Solana projects that have issued tokens in the past few months have achieved excellent secondary market performance.

Among them, Jito (JTO) in the LSD track and Jupiter (JUP) in the DeFi track, while still having a certain gap in market capitalization (MC) compared to leading projects in the Ethereum ecosystem, have achieved higher fully diluted valuations (FDV). The specific comparisons are as follows:

Odaily Note: TNSR's MC data is sourced from Coinmarketcap, while other data is sourced from CoinGecko.

As shown in the figure above, TNSR, as another leading project in the Solana ecosystem, has maintained a performance pattern similar to JTO and JUP, characterized by "lower MC relative to FDV." If we apply the precedent of JTO and JUP where "FDV can surpass Ethereum leaders," TNSR seems to have some upward potential.

It is important to emphasize that this should not be viewed as an investment basis, firstly because this precedent lacks clear logical support, and secondly because NFTs are not currently a hot narrative, which adds greater uncertainty to TNSR's future performance.