NFT
Solana NFT market leader Magic Eden is preparing to refocus on the blockchain platform it calls its “home” after a new rival briefly took its crown.
Tensor, which launched late last year and bills itself as the “Blur of Solana,” last week first beat Magic Eden for the highest 24-hour volume, according to data from Flipside Crypto.
Although Magic Eden was only dethroned for a few days, the move caught his attention.
“What the market needs now is a deep, renewed focus on Solana, and we intend to show the Solana community that we still stand behind them,” said Tiffany Huang, head of marketing and content at Magic Eden, to The Block. “We are excited to refocus on Solana, which is our home.”
Magic Eden has been the volume leader among the Solana NFT marketplaces since November 2021 and was valued at $1.6 billion last June. It has expanded to other chains and added support for Polygon, Ethereum, and Bitcoin, an expansion that Huang says diverted its focus from Solana.
Meanwhile, Tensor has rapidly risen in popularity and is now firmly entrenched behind Magic Eden, according to The Block’s Data Dashboard.
Tensor defeats Magic Eden
Tensor topped Magic Eden for the highest 24-hour volume for the first time last week on April 26, when it placed Crypto volumes of 95.4K SOL to Magic Eden’s 77.2K SOL, according to Flipside. It held the top spot – all but one day – through April 30.
Tensor, which raised $3 million in seed funding in March, was helped beat Magic Eden by the Mad Lads NFT Collection. Created by startup Coral, it is the first NFT collection released under the xNFT standard and has already become the fourth largest NFT collection by sales volume in the last 30 days, according to data from Crypto Slam.
According to Kevin Peng of The Block Research, xNFTs, short for executable NFTs, are expected to open new avenues for user interaction through Coral’s xNFT wallet, Backpack.
Mad Lads incentives
Mad Lads is a “very special project,” Ilja Moisejevs, founder and CEO of Tensor, told The Block. “That’s why we went a step further” by providing incentives for the NFT collection, which led to the outperformance, Moisejevs added.
Both Tensor and Magic Eden provided incentives for the Mad Lads collection. Tensor offered to use 100% of the fees it collects on Mad Lads for the next three months to buy back the NFTs from the market and reward them to people who trade Mad Lads on its platform. “Anyone can win, big or small,” Richard Wu, co-founder and CTO of Tensor, told The Block.
Magic Eden also had incentives on Mad Lads, first opting for 0% trading fees for the first 24 hours post-mint before extending it to 72 hours post-mint. It also offered a prize pool worth 2,000 SOL tokens for the top 50 Mad Lads traders (buy and sell volume combined) for 30 days through May 21.
“I think having 0% fees, like what Magic Eden offered, is actually more appealing in my opinion, but when there’s a lot of hype around a particular NFT collection, the kind of promotion that Tensor did – where they said they had the would sweep floors – tends to get more attention and support from people loyal to the project and it turns out that Tensor’s strategy was more effective,” said Peng of The Block Research.
Magic Eden tweets at Tensor
Magic Eden appeared to go after Tensor on his brief outperformance by posting controversial tweets and later deleting them. “I don’t think people like to see teams attacking other teams directly in the sort of retaliatory way that Magic Eden did,” Peng said. “It just gives off a negative vibe and almost seems desperate. So I think the Solana NFT community has turned their support in Tensor’s favor as a result.”
But according to Huang, the response was “extremely positive” after Magic Eden gave away more than 5,000 SOL as part of its incentive program. “There have been several mentions of how it feels like Magic Eden is giving back. This is encouraging for us,” said Huang.
As for Tensor, it has so far given away about 4,200 SOL tokens as part of its incentive program, Wu said, adding that the platform expects to give away another 25,000 SOL tokens by the end of the three-month incentive period, based on on “conservative” estimates.
While Huang didn’t specifically elaborate on what the refocus might look like, she said the market will look to product innovation to improve user experiences, partnerships with ecosystems and “back in the community.”