Solana Spaces Close Less Than a Year After Opening

Solana Spaces, two retail stores that opened up this summer in New York and Miami, will be closing down by the end of February.

The retail stores for Solana-based projects were the idea of San Francisco-based investor @vibhu, who wanted to offer a more face-to-face onboarding experience to those interested in NFTs and the blockchain in general.

Subpar Performance

However, as laid out in a statement on SolanaSpaces Twitter, the project attracted fewer people than expected.

According to Vibhu, the goal was always to switch to a different method of attracting curious potential investors to the Solana ecosystem if the opportunity presented itself.

This opportunity seems to have materialized in the form of DRiP, a new project by the same investor that focuses on airdropping free NFTs to people that they onboard, giving them a head start in the NFT game to others who created a wallet out of curiosity.

Unfortunately for the SolanaSpaces retail stores, this new project performed significantly better.

“While our stores onboard between 500 and 1000 people per week, DRiP onboards that same quantity EVERY DAY. Over the last 2 months, it became increasingly clear to me that we were at an inflection point with our stores and our digital products, and a few weeks ago we made the call to focus our ongoing efforts on DRiP.”

As a result, the two physical stores will be closed by the time spring rolls around.

The Way Forward

Nevertheless, the store plans to go out in style. First of all, the code powering Solana Spaces will be made open source as soon as the stores officially close. As a result, anyone who would be interested in carrying on the legacy of SolanaSpaces would be free to do so without having to worry about rebranding or copyright claims.

Second, although the stores are closing, Vibhu plans to keep a physical location open in these cities – but they would be used only for physical pick-ups of Solana merch and community events.

However, until the stores officially close on the 28th of February, those working there will be giving out free Solana merch, and all fans are encouraged to stop by, say goodbye, and pick up any merch they may have ordered.