Coinbase has positioned itself as the infrastructure layer for retail crypto access in 2025, absorbing teams and technology that could accelerate its “all-exchange” vision.
A Nov. 21 announcement that it was acquiring Vector.fun, Solana’s fastest-moving DEX aggregator, fit the pattern: acquire the rails, retire the product, integrate the speed.
But the deal made an unusual exception.
While Coinbase acquires Vector’s team and infrastructure, the Tensor Foundation maintains the NFT marketplace and the TNSR token. Token holders retain their governance rights, but lose the ownership that justified the token’s existence.
The separation raises a question: If equity holders get value from acquisitions while token holders are stripped of their core assets without any compensation, why would they buy tokens from Coinbase’s platforms in the first place?
TNSR traded at $0.0344 on November 19, down 92% since the beginning of the year. On November 20, the price peaked at $0.3650, an elevenfold gain in 48 hours.
Volume rose from months of less than $10 million days to $735 million on November 19, and then $1.9 billion on November 20. As of November 21, TNSR dumped 37.3% in 24 hours to $0.1566, generating a sales volume of $960 million.
The pattern suggests classic front-running: someone knew, someone bought, and retail entered the market late.
The logic behind removing Vector from Tensor
Coinbase framed the acquisition as a bet on Solana’s infrastructure. According to the announcement, Solana DEX volume already reached $1 trillion by 2025, and Vector’s technology identifies new tokens as they are launched on-chain or via major launch pads.
That speed is important for Coinbase’s DEX trading integration, which will compete with native Solana apps that give users direct access to high-speed trading.
But Vector was not a standalone product. It was Tensor’s consumer-facing play, intended to increase the utility of TNSR and channel liquidity back to the NFT market.
Separating the two only makes sense if Coinbase wants the infrastructure without the governance complications that come with holding or supporting a token.
By leaving TNSR with the Tensor Foundation, Coinbase avoids regulatory exposure and removes the operational layer that made Vector valuable.
Token holders are left with a governance token for a marketplace that just lost its most promising growth engine.
Omar Kanji, investor at Dragonfly, has put the disconnect bluntly:
“There is a serious dissonance between Coinbase ‘minting’ everything and paying token holders ‘nothing’ on their Vector purchase. TNSR token holders have just been stripped of their best asset and given about $0 in return. If this continues, people will simply stop buying tokens.”
The comment speaks to greater friction in crypto’s dual-class system. Coinbase equity investors stand to benefit as the company acquires technology. Meanwhile, in projects like Tensor, token holders are forced to take on asset stripping without a seat at the negotiating table.
The infrastructure that makes separation possible
Account abstraction and modular blockchain architecture allow companies to break down products into components and acquire only the parts they need.
Vector’s infrastructure sits between liquidity sources and user interfaces on-chain, routing trades through automated market makers, order books and liquidity pools.
Coinbase can plug that routing layer into the DEX integration, rebranding the experience with native functionality and ditching Vector’s consumer app.
Solana’s sub-second finality and low transaction fees allow aggregators like Vector to process thousands of transactions per second. That speed is important for the launch of meme tokens and NFT coins, where price discovery takes place within minutes.
Coinbase is now controlling that speed advantage, which it can leverage to compete with Raydium, Orca and Jupiter for retail order flow on Solana.
The Tensor Foundation maintains the NFT marketplace, a slower-moving, off-story, lower-margin business that Coinbase likely considers non-core.
What will be broken if this becomes the norm?
If token holders are consistently stripped of assets during acquisitions, the incentive to hold governance tokens collapses. Tokens become short-term bets on hype cycles rather than long-term bets on protocol value.
Jon Charbonneau, co-founder of investment firm DBA, noted the reputation costs:
“Harder for Coinbase to sell their new ICO platform when they set the precedent of token holders getting roughed up by Coinbase’s own acquisitions. With an active buyer of ICO now launching, it raises more questions for me in conducting due diligence on ICO tokens from them versus other platforms paving the way themselves.”
The front-running pattern exacerbates the problem. TNSR’s $1.9 billion volume spike on November 20, one day before the announcement, indicates that information has been leaked.
The largest daily volume recorded by TNSR in 2025 before November 19 was $83.7 million on March 10. The 25-fold increase in volume does not occur organically.
Someone probably bought before the news, and retail traders chasing the pump absorbed the exit liquidity when the announcement hit.
Monitoring of trading involving crypto insiders remains inconsistent, but the optics could damage Coinbase’s positioning as the clean, compliant on-ramp for institutional capital.
The company has for years distanced itself from offshore exchanges that operate with looser disclosure standards. If the acquisitions now create the same guiding patterns that define the pump-and-dump system, the distinction becomes blurred.
What this means for token launches and platform credibility
Coinbase plans to expand its token listing infrastructure and position itself as the premier venue for launching new assets in the US markets. The Vector acquisition undermines that pitch.
If developers and early investors know that Coinbase will acquire their technology while leaving token holders with amortized governance rights, they can structure deals to favor shares over tokens.
That shifts capital formation away from decentralized models and back to traditional venture capital-backed structures, where shareholders control exits and provide token holders with liquidity without representation.
The alternative would require Coinbase to compensate token holders during acquisitions, either through token buybacks, share conversions, or direct payouts. None of these options are easy.
Redemptions may raise securities law concerns. Conversion of shares would require treating tokens as investment contracts, which Coinbase avoids for regulatory reasons.
Direct payouts would set a precedent that any acquisition must include token consideration, limiting Coinbase’s flexibility to picking infrastructure without governance baggage.
Every token launch on Coinbase’s platform now carries the implicit risk that the company will later acquire the underlying project, extract the valuable assets and leave the token holders with amortized governance rights.
If Coinbase wants to dominate token launches, it needs a better answer than “stock holders benefit, token holders don’t.” The Vector deal proves that this is not there yet. The market will decide whether that matters.
