Solana-backed NFT marketplace Tensor announces governance token

Backed by Solana founders, NFT marketplace Tensor has revealed the launch of its own token TNSR to govern protocols that have traded over $2 billion worth of NFTs.

In an X thread on Mar. 12, the Tensor Foundation revealed the launch of TNSR, a governance token for Solana-centric NFT marketplace Tensor, which raised a total of $3 million from a pool of investors like Placeholder VC, Solana Ventures, Alliance DAO, Big Brain Holdings and Solana co-founders Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal.

The foundation notes that the latest development comes as Tensor protocols have facilitated over $2 billion worth of transactions in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Solana, making them a cornerstone of the rapidly growing NFT market.

With TNSR, the Tensor Foundation essentially wants to govern protocols adopted by its community. While the foundation did not disclose a specific timeline for the token launch, it dropped hints indicating that TNSR will play a pivotal role in incentivizing an ecosystem of creators and builders committed to the success of NFTs.

Built on Solana, Tensor asserts its role in facilitating a significant portion, reportedly over 70%, of Solana’s NFT trading volume, highlighting the exclusion of wash trading from this statistic. The debut of TNSR arrives following a craze surrounding misspelled celebrity memecoins, particularly those built on Solana. As crypto.news reported earlier, some of these tokens experienced staggering price surges exceeding 1,000%.

Tensor’s journey was initially bootstrapped with $70,000 in prize money from winning two Solana hackathons in 2022. Founded by Ilja Moisejevs and Richard Wu, the platform gained traction even despite challenges like the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange, which played a crucial role in support of Solana.