This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe . The Solana NFT marketplace Tensor will now split revenue from its social trading app, Vector, between the TNSR treasury and Tensor’s developer shop. Vector is a mobile social trading app with a built-in crypto wallet that lets users broadcast their trades to other users. With Vector adopting TNSR, the Tensor Foundation — which oversees Tensor’s token — will “steward” the protocols powering Vector, although Tensor’s labs entity will build the product. 50% of Vector’s revenue is set to go to the TNSR treasury, which can be used for things like airdrops and grants. The other half of the revenue will go to Tensor. Vector is a bit like if Robinhood and X had a baby that loved memecoins. The app is still invite-only, but it is currently earning more than $90 million in annualized revenue from a 1% trading fee, which would be 10x the revenue Tensor earns from its NFT marketplace, Tensor said. A Flipside dashboard suggests Vector has between 4,000 and 5,000 daily returning wallets. Tensor co-founder and CEO Ilja Moisejevs told me the company launched Vector because it saw the NFT sector dying out and wanted to pivot to a “1000x larger market” in memecoins. For context, Tensor’s NFT platform earned $9 million in marketplace trading revenue over the past year, according to NFT Pulse. Memecoin launchpad pump.fun made $9 million in revenue yesterday. For now, the Tensor Foundation treasury will only accrue value from Vector, but Moisejevs told me that in the future the platform’s community could vote to do something like buy back and burn tokens, as the DEX aggregator Jupiter just did. In any event, TNSR holders will hope the new revenue stream can help turn around the token’s trajectory. TNSR launched at $1.70 in April 2024, according to CoinGecko, and it now trades at $0.39 — despite the whole crypto president being elected thing that happened in between. Key to that turnaround will be Vector cracking the code of social trading, which has been attempted before in crypto to limited success. “What we think is different this time is a) memecoins are inherently social and b) we found a form factor for shared trades that people actually like,” Tensor co-founder and CTO Richard Wu said in a statement. Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter . Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter . Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more. The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.
