Solana Spaces, a “phygital” store designed to help consumers better understand NFTs, blockchain and Web3, is on a global expansion path fueled by a unique franchising model. The retailer, which opened its first permanent store in July 2022 at Manhattan’s Hudson Yards mall, plans to add 10 stores in 2023 in cities including London, Los Angeles and New Delhi.
Each location will be supported by SpacesDAO [decentralized autonomous organization], an on-chain retail co-op offering architectural plans, fixture specs, software, up to $50,0000 in capital and monetization tools.
“It’s our bet that Solana will change how retail is done,” said Solana Spaces Founder Vibhu Norby during a speech at the Breakpoint 2022 event in Lisbon earlier this month. He explained that Solana Spaces, which created both the New York City store and a Solana Embassy in Miami that functions as “a lounge, a community center and a nightclub,” has taken its learnings about elements such as hardware and software design, merchandise and physical spaces and provided them to SpacesDAO.
[Solana Spaces] “will be the first open source retailer,” said Norby. “You can create your own space in your own city, [starting by] using GeoNFTs to carve out the borders on a map. The GeoNFT scores these coordinates on chain so they don’t overlap, and we can send them as NFTs to people’s wallets.”
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Additionally, because these NFTs are composable and tradeable, it’s possible for SpacesDAO to auction off the rights to markets in key sites such as London or Dubai, Norby added. “The next franchising business might be built on top of NFTs,” said Norby.
Since its opening this past summer, the NYC Solana Spaces store has hosted 30,000 visitors and helped people complete 10,000 Solana tutorials, Norby noted. “We’ve hosted parties and meetups there, and we expect a total of 200,000 visitors in NYC and Miami next year, and to onboard 70,000 people into Solana,” he said.
“We have signed commitments from all over the world,” said Norby. “We want Solana Spaces everywhere.”
