Tensor climbs to the top of the Solana NFT market totem pole
Just two months ago, NFT trading platform Tensor raised $3 million in a seed round. Fast forward to today, and it is close to regaining its position as the largest Solana-based NFT marketplace, based on market share.
“A lot of momentum came from the announcement,” said Tensor co-founder Richard Wu, speaking about the seed round, which TechCrunch covered exclusively in March. “When it comes to a marketplace, liquidity is the key to attracting users, and that had a snowball effect on itself.”
Tensor last week reached 45% of Solana’s NFT market share, surpassing Solana-centric NFT marketplace Magic Eden’s 44% share over a seven-day period, according to data collected by Tiexo. While the 1% difference may seem nominal, it’s a big jump for a fairly new platform up against a behemoth with almost 200 times the users.
Tensor launched a private beta in June 2022 and opened to the public the following month. By March, it had over 30,000 monthly active users, and by April, MAU was up about 317% to over 125,000, co-founder Ilja Moisejevs said.
Compared to Magic Eden, which has 22 million unique monthly visitors, it makes its share of the market significant.
Magic Eden has since reclaimed the top spot for Solana-based NFT volume over the past seven days with a 44.2% share, per Tiexo data, and Tensor is not far behind with 40.5%. But market share is “not a top priority” for Tensor, Wu said. “For us, market share is a proxy for what we’re building, but at the end of the day, our goal is to grow Solana 10x.”
“I think a lot of people on Twitter like to dramatize things,” Moisejevs said. “They want to see a battle for market places. There is healthy competition between us [and Magic Eden], but the point we want to drive home is that we are not here to win 80% of a non-existent market. We want us to win, Solana to win, and we want to become a bigger company if Solana as a chain does well.”
Solana is the third largest blockchain for NFTs by sales volume, with over $3.96 billion in all-time sales, according to data from NFT aggregator CryptoSlam. Over the past 30 days, Solana NFT sales volume has fallen by about 24.4% to $73.3 million, the data showed.
In general, the Solana ecosystem is getting stronger, at least compared to six months ago, Wu said. A good example of that is the people and projects like Mad Lads, he said, adding that at one point it was a peak collection in volume ahead of some Ethereum blue chip collections. “What they have done and demonstrated with the launch at Solana is incredible.”
