- The IRL Solana stores are to close after hosting over 75,000 people.
- However, according to the founder, DRiP NFTs are more effective at onboarding new users than Solana Spaces.
- The stores will remain open until February 28.
Solana Spaces will close its stores in Miami and New York City tt the end of February to concentrate on its free NFT product DRiP and other digital products. The decision was made as part of a previously disclosed goal to combine efforts more effectively to get customers into Solana.
A project called Solana Spaces established store outlets in July 2022 to introduce new people face-to-face to cryptocurrency, first in New York and subsequently in Miami. In addition to selling goods, the stores included a private booth where customers could set up Phantom wallets. The Solana Spaces also provided a free non-fungible token (NFT) for the Phantom onboarding process.
Additionally, the stores offered training for programs like the Magic Edens NFT marketplace and the play-to-earn (P2E) app STEPN. The founder of Solana Spaces, Vibhu, had global growth plans for the in-real-life (IRL) stores. But on February 21, he tweeted that Solana Spaces would be closing.
Low Performance
Vibhu has decided to close the Solana IRL stores after hosting over 75,000 visitors. As a statement on SolanaSpaces’ Twitter account explained, the initiative drew fewer people than was anticipated.
According to Vibhu, the objective was always to change to a different strategy if the chance presented itself to draw interested potential investors to the Solana ecosystem.
This opportunity has come to fulfillment in the form of DRiP, a new venture from the same investor that focuses on airdropping free NFTs to people they onboard to give them an advantage over those who formed wallets out of curiosity.
Regrettably, this new project fared much better than the SolanaSpaces retail stores.
Vibhu wrote:
“While our stores onboard between 500 and 1000 people per week, DRiP onboards that same quantity EVERY DAY. Over the last two months, it became increasingly clear to me that we were at an inflection point with our stores and digital products, and a few weeks ago, we made the call to focus our ongoing efforts on DRiP.”
Moving Ahead
But, the store wants to close with a bang. First, as soon as the stores officially close, the code that runs Solana Spaces will be available online. Because of this, anyone who wanted to continue SolanaSpaces’ legacy could do so without worrying about rebranding or copyright disputes. Vibhu stated:
“First, with @spaces_dao. We plan to continue supporting the mission for Solana IRL worldwide by open-sourcing both the software that powers Spaces and the brand, and we hope to see people picking up where we left off”.
Second, despite the stores shutting, Vibhu intends to maintain a physical presence in these places; however, they will only be used for community events and the actual pickup of Solana merchandise.
All fans are urged to stop by, say farewell, and pick up any merchandise they may have bought because employees will give away free Solana merchandise until the stores’ formal closing on February 28.
