Solana Set to Unveil Retail Store in New York as its ‘Cultural Centre’

By:

Updated: Jul 28, 2022, 11:03 UTC

Located in Manhattan, New York, Solana's new physical store has generated a buzz on social media

Key Insights:

The Solana Spaces store features an interactive art installation and Solana-themed merchandise.
The shop also offers customers tutorials for the Phantom wallet.
Solana reached a total sales volume of around $2.35 billion last month.

Solana, one of the world’s largest blockchains by market capitalisation, is opening a permanent physical store in Manhattan, New York which will act as a “cultural centre” for the project.

A standout element of the Solana Spaces store is that it will feature an interactive art installation, as well as offering users the chance to checkout using Solana Pay.

The World of Web3

The new store, which is located in the Hudson Yards neighbourhood, boasts a non-fungible token (NFT) gallery featuring the Degenerate Ape Academy collection. The Solana-based collection is comprised of 10,000 algorithmically-generated 3D apes.

At Solana Spaces, the interactive art installation displays real-time visualisations based on what is occurring on the Solana blockchain in terms of transactions and minted NFTs.

The one-of-a-kind shop is littered with Solana-branded merchandise for sale, including limited edition Blanksoles sneakers. Earlier this year, the decentralised sneaker company Blanksoles announced a partnership with former NBA champion Metta Sandiford-Artest to launch a series of Solana-based NFTs and physical sneakers.

In addition, Solana Spaces accepts cryptocurrency as a payment method, with Solana Pay facilitating transactions for customers. Beyond this, the store also offers tutorials for the Phantom wallet and Magic Eden. Notably, Phantom is a popular non-custodial crypto wallet designed for Solana which has over one million users.

Solana’s Success

There is no doubt that Solana is one of the world’s most popular blockchains when it comes to non-fungible tokens and decentralised finance (DeFi), with its native cryptocurrency SOL ranking as the ninth largest globally.

In May this year, the project made headlines when its NFT sales generated more money than Ethereum’s during a 24-hour period.

Indeed, Solana has become an alternative to the more costly Ethereum (ETH) blockchain to trade NFTs considering that the project claims to ensure transactions will always remain less than $0.01 for both developers and users. In contrast, the average transaction fee on Ethereum is $3.71 at the time of writing.

In addition, Solanart is a fully-fledged NFT marketplace based on the network that allows anyone to acquire or sell NFTs, with the overarching goal of helping to promote artists and creators.

Overall, the project has managed to reach a total sales volume of around $2.35 billion as of June, with average monthly NFT sales totalling $150 million this year.

This surge can be attributed to a large amount of buyers entering the market and by January this year, there were 153,602 unique buyers carrying out 1,014,963 transactions on Solana. In fact, the project recorded its all-time high monthly sales volume that same month at $298.69 million.

About the Author

Mohadesa Najumiauthor

Mohadesa Najumi is a British writer who has worked within crypto, forex, financial technology, and the stock market industry. Mohadesa received her MSc in Political Science and International Relations at the University of Amsterdam.