Solana Spaces, a Solana-themed retail storefront founded just over a year ago by Vibhu Norby, has announced that it will close its stores in New York City and Miami by the end of February. The company will instead focus on its digital products, including DRiP, a free NFT product with over 100,000 sign-ups.

The decision was made after an inflection point where it became increasingly clear that the company was at a crossroads between its stores and digital products. According to Vibhu Norby, the founder of Solana Spaces, DRiP onboarded the same quantity of people every day as the stores did in a week.

According to the announcement, Solana Spaces was initially funded by the Solana Foundation, and the company is deeply grateful to Phantom, Orca, and many other ecosystem teams for sponsoring it over the last year.

The retail team at Solana Spaces hosted almost 75,000 people in its stores, helping thousands of them walk away with Phantom wallets and Solana merch, Vibhu Norby said in the statement.

While Solana Spaces is saying goodbye to its US-based stores, it will continue its mission to bring people to Web3 with its digital products and Spaces DAO. First, with Spaces DAO, the company plans to continue supporting the mission for Solana in real life all over the world by open-sourcing both the software that powers Spaces and the brand. Second, the company is in the process of identifying a place for people to pick up Solana merch and participate in other in real life (IRL) activities in NYC and Miami.