Key Takeaways:
- The company behind Solana Spaces is moving away from physical entrances to Web3 to onboard customers.
- The “experiment” was part of a strategy to get more people to use Solana, but the stores didn’t attract as many customers as they had planned.
At the end of the month, Solana Spaces will shut down its two community-focused, Solana-themed retail locations in Miami and New York City since more people should have signed up at the actual locations as expected.
On February 21, Solana Spaces tweeted the information and a letter from the company’s founder Vibhu Vibhu outlining the closure rationale.
The company hit an “inflection point” with the stores, according to Vibhu, who created Solana Spaces in early 2022, which caused them to change their investment focus to “DRiP,” the company’s new nonfungible token artistic airdrop platform. Vibhu explained the decision to change the company’s investing strategy:
“While our stores onboard between 500 and 1,000 people per week, DRiP onboards that same quantity EVERY DAY,”
The shops, which are situated in Miami’s Wynwood and Manhattan’s Hudson Yards, will “sunset” at the end of February after the decision to close them was taken “a few weeks ago,” according to Vibhu. The grandiose project lasted briefly because the two stores opened in late July and early August in New York and Miami, respectively. According to Vibhu, the “experiment” was part of a larger strategy to bring more individuals on board with the Solana and Web3 ecosystem:
“Our endowed mission from day one was to experiment with new and disruptive models to bring people to Web3, and to serve the community on behalf of the Solana Foundation.”
Customers could participate in anything from in-person wallet onboarding training, earning awards, shopping for items, and attending events at the Solana-themed boutiques. Vibhu stated:
“we are in the process of identifying a place for people to pick up Solana merch and participate in other IRL activities in NYC and Miami.”
Vibhu believed the Solana Spaces store would bring in more than 100,000 visitors to Solana each month when it opened its first New York location in the latter part of July. Yet, Vibhu claimed in his letter that during the store’s seven-month existence, just 75,000 individuals could enter by foot.
The lengthy crypto winter has forced some market-leading enterprises to lay off employees and close operations worldwide, and this closure comes simultaneously.
