What Is Tensor?

Popular Ethereum NFT collections including CryptoPunks, Bored Ape Yacht Club, Art Blocks, and several other classic collections of the era were major contributors to the explosion in popularity of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) during the 2021 bull market. The NFT boom was sparked by Ethereum, but many cryptocurrency users were priced out of the mainnet by gas fees. Other layer-1 blockchains saw a spike in NFT trading as a result, with Solana emerging as one of the top chains with robust and active NFT communities.

But as the NFT market expanded, it became clear that the current NFT infrastructure was inadequate and inefficient. In order to find the best pricing to buy or sell their NFTs at, traders had to search through several NFT platforms. Furthermore, it was challenging for sellers to obtain immediate liquidity because they had to offer their NFTs and then wait for an interested buyer to buy them, all the while hoping that another seller wouldn’t undercut their listing price.

NFT marketplace aggregators, which have a number of features created especially to enhance the sophisticated NFT trading experience, were created as a result of these difficulties. This took the form of the Blur NFT marketplace on Ethereum, and Tensor was introduced on Solana to address these problems.

According to data platform Tiexo, Tensor, which was launched in July 2022, is currently the most popular Solana marketplace in terms of volume, unique wallets, and new users over the last six months. On April 8, the NFT protocol, supported by Solana Ventures, Placeholder VC, and Solana founders Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal, unveiled TNSR, its native governance token.

How Does Tensor Work?

Tensor’s integrated automated market maker (AMM) and NFT marketplace aggregator are its primary features. Liquidity from NFT marketplaces throughout the Solana ecosystem, including established players Magic Eden and Solanart, as well as NFTFi protocols like Elixir and Hadeswap, is consolidated by the NFT marketplace aggregator. This eliminated the need for traders to cross-check prices across several platforms and guarantee that they only received the best offers for NFT collections that piqued their attention.

Liquidity for NFT trades, which has long been an issue in the NFT industry, is greatly increased by the integrated AMM’s many sophisticated capabilities. From the buyer’s point of view, Tensor’s AMM made it simple to sweep several NFTs simultaneously, allowing big buyers to make purchases fast, particularly when trading on information that needs to be processed quickly. Furthermore, traders can effectively make limit orders for one or more purchases from a collection using the Bid feature. Additionally, the bid price is automatically reduced each time an NFT is sold into your bids.

Tensorians — Tensor’s NFT Collection

On August 8, 2023, Tensor launched Tensorians, a 10,000 supply profile picture (PFP) NFT collection. It is a compilation of early adopters and ardent supporters of the Solana NFT marketplace for the then-emerging Tensor community. Access to a gated society, point incentives, Tensorian staking, and other advantages are all made possible by owning a Tensorian. For example, Tensorians will receive a boost on points gained in the upcoming Season 4, with a 1.25X boost for one Tensorrian, a 1.5X boost for ten, and a 2X increase for those with 50.

It was worth about $40 when it was first coined, at 1.69 SOL. Tensorians saw a sharp increase in value, peaking at almost $11,400 per NFT in December 2023, as SOL recovered and Tensor and the larger Solana ecosystem began to heat up in Q4 2023. At the moment, tensorians are trading at 17.85 SOL.