The Underdog of Solana: Tensorians

Tensorians have a real shot at becoming the iconic PFP on Solana

Author

The Metadata
August 18, 2023

Welcome to The Metadata, the only NFT newsletter that you’ll ever need.

Today we cover:

  • DeGods continues to slide. Much drama happening on Twitter. Grab your popcorn 🍿

  • The underdogs of Solana: Tensorians. Why isn’t anyone talking about this?

  • A 6-figure loan gets taken out on Tyler Hobb’s 1/1 artworks

Market Update

All eyes are on DeGods this week as its floor price continues to slide. At 4 ETH, it’s a >50% drop from before Season 3 was launched. But if there’s one thing DeGods are good at, it’s making the news.

Machi became a DeGod whale after having 300+ DeGods dumped on him by Blur sellers. And in the past day, several large wallets have publicly offered to buy back his DeGods, for fear of him dumping them and nuking the price.

Despite all the banter on Twitter, it seems like he didn’t take the OTC deal and has been selling them on the open market. He has 31 DeGods left at the time of writing.

Notable collections:

  • Bored Ape Yacht Club (28 ETH, -9% from last week)

  • Mutant Ape Yacht Club (5.4 ETH, -5%)

  • Azuki (4.5 ETH, -8%)

  • Milady (4.1 ETH, -5%)

  • Pudgy Penguins (3.9 ETH, -5%)

2 projects we covered in the past that have been doing quite well:

  1. The Grapes: 0.62 ETH floor price (was 0.2 ETH when we covered it)

  2. Parallel Avatars: 0.2 ETH floor price (0.11 ETH on mint, fell to 0.07 ETH at one point)

The Underdog of Solana: Tensorians

Hold the phone, folks! Ever heard of Tensor? No? Well, buckle up, because this young upstart that dropped a PFP collection last week is making waves, and we're here to spill the tea.

“Tensor who?”

Tensor is the young upstart that has overtaken Magic Eden as the top NFT marketplace on Solana in less than a year.

This is super impressive, considering that Tensor has only raised $3M in a seed round earlier this year. In contrast, its rival Magic Eden has been around for much longer and raised $130M in its latest funding.

Talk about a David vs Goliath battle. And David appears to be winning… for now.

Tensorians

Over the past few months, users of Tensor’s marketplace could earn reward points for placing bids, listing NFTs and market making.

Instead of airdropping a token like Blur did, Tensor took a different approach.

These points were converted into Tensorian Shards this month — 100,000 NFTs which were airdropped straight into their wallets. These could be used to mint Tensorians (10,000 max supply)

10 Tensorian Shards + 1.69 SOL = 1 Tensorian.

The art for Tensorians was made by Zen0m, a highly talented pixel artist, and has a unique style that is highly recognizable.

And people like Tensorians: it now sits at a floor price of 18 SOL ($400). In fact people like it so much that it propelled Tensor to hit 50%+ market share on Solana for the first time ever.

How was Tensor able to do this? It’s the power of compressed NFTs on Solana, a feature that makes it possible to mint large numbers of NFTs at a very low cost.

🤑 The Bottom line

If you're a Solana NFT enthusiast, Tensor's probably already on your radar. They've built a community that's more passionate than fans at a rock concert. Tensorians might just become the iconic PFP on Solana, rivaling even the Mad Lads.

Tensorians have a real shot at becoming the iconic PFP on Solana, perhaps even rivaling Mad Lads. Its success hinges on how well Tensor does as a marketplace. If it does well, expect Tensorians to benefit.

Plus, we could expect perks for the Tensorians:

  • Whitelist spots for new mints

  • Free NFTs via raffles (who doesn’t love free stuff?)

  • Access to alpha group chats

And at some point, Tensor might drop a fungible token ($TNSR). Holding a Tensorian might be your golden ticket… we think.

The bottom line is: NFTs are great tools for building community: rewarding loyal users and retaining them, and even acquiring new users. The early success of Tensorians proves the point.

More web3 projects should be thinking hard about how they can incorporate NFTs into their products.

Our Favourite Tweets

🐥 A 6-figure loan is taken on Tyler Hobb’s 1/1 art works

🐥 Wrapture holders are truly diamond hands

🐥 Sotheby’s NFT auction of 3AC’s assets nets $1M in sales

🐥 Genesis mooncats getting a resurgence?

🐥 Many real-world assets (houses, bonds, luxury watches) will be represented by NFTs in the future

🐥 What’s going on with Treasure DAO? Hint: a lot

🐥 New web3 game by the Wanderers. Remember them from 2021?

🐥 The best gaming Twitter Spaces

🐥 Article: Brands and Web3

🐥 Not NFT related, but a must-read thread about crypto market cycles and what’s coming up ahead

🐥 ZTX raises $13M seed round: “the joint blockchain initiative of Jump Crypto and ZEPETO —the largest avatar social network in Asia with over 400 million lifetime users. With our already existing web2 user base of 20M MAUs, we are set to become the largest, web3 virtual world.”

Upcoming Mints

🍿 heart + craft by Snowfro (Art Blocks founder) & Jordan Lyall: “a new kind NFT project merging the digital and physical, where holders are empowered to create a physical version of their unique 3D heart at home”.

Minting on 24 August at 0.01 ETH each. Unlimited supply.

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That's it for today folks, see you tomorrow. If you want more, follow us on Twitter (@the_metadata). If you were forwarded this newsletter, you can subscribe with just one-click:

Disclaimer: This newsletter is for educational purposes only. None of this is financial or investment advice. It is not a solicitation to buy or sell any assets. Minting and buying NFTs is risky. Please do your own research.