Well yeah, around 5-8% slower than 3080 in rasterization can be also called "somewhere in between" but I think you took the meaning quite too far. Also ignoring lower power, cheaper, and with more VRAM than both competitors. I dunno about 10 Gbytes, but 8 Gigabytes of VRAM will soon be a limit.
Cheaper depends on where you live. In Sweden the reference cards were not cheaper. And the AIB cards will cost premium just like RTX 30 series