Solana Spaces Resurrects in NYC—Crypto’s Favorite Ghost Story Gets a Sequel

Solana’s flagship retail hub rises from the dead—proving even blockchain projects get second acts in New York’s cutthroat crypto scene.

Inside the revival: The once-shuttered Web3 showcase space now doubles as a bull market trophy case, complete with NFT displays that somehow still aren’t tax-deductible. Wall Street tourists can once again gawk at decentralized apps while sipping $8 artisanal coffee—because nothing says ’financial revolution’ like overpriced caffeine.

The cynical take: Another brick-and-mortar crypto vanity play, just in time for the next market cycle’s institutional bagholders.

A fan of the old Hudson Yards store launched a memecoin called STORE in January which briefly eclipsed $12 million in market capitalization, according to DEX Screener data. Some early buyers of the token — which is now closer to $3 million in market cap — came together to try and revive Solana Spaces, Gharte told me. He added that the Solana Spaces team hasn’t sold its tokens and has self-imposed a vesting period.

The project is partly self-funded but also has inked sponsorship deals and received grant funding from the Solana Foundation, Gharte said.

The vision for Solana Spaces is to continue running pop-ups during crypto conferences, where Spaces gives crypto teams a place to sell their merchandise, and Solana Spaces collects 20% of the profit, Gharte said. He estimated 70% of sales volume is paid with credit cards compared to 30% in stablecoins.

I found Vibhu Norby, who was founder and CEO of the original Solana Spaces before building a Jupiter-acquired NFT app named DRiP, steaming a cloth banner in the back of the store. He told me he was “skeptical” when he saw a memecoin community crop up around reviving his deprecated business, but he gave the team some initial capital, support and introductions, and he hoped they could figure it out.

Norby told me he was initially drawn to starting Solana Spaces by a belief that blockchain communities can FORM network states, a Balaji Srinivasan-coined term for digital communities forming their own real-world communities. Norby added that in crypto, traditional identity markers tend to be replaced by things like profile pictures or merchandise. 

“To me, there is a higher meaning to it. It’s not just a merch shop. Here you come and you find your home, and you walk away with a piece of that,” Norby said.

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