The new Solana Spaces store attracted around 400 crypto-curious visitors on its debut day, and it plans to host many more as additional shops open in the United States and across the world.

The new Solana Spaces physical locations, according to CEO Vibhu Norby, will introduce up to 100,000 individuals per month to the Solana ecosystem while also signaling plans for a virtual storefront in the near future.

The Solana Foundation provided the funds for the first Solana Spaces store to open in New York’s swanky Hudson Yards shopping center.

On launch day, Norby addressed the community in an unplanned Twitter chat session. He said that the store is intended to educate new users about how to use decentralized applications (DApps) and promised thousands of individuals would be introduced to Solana’s blockchain.

There are over a thousand DApps in Solana, ranging from trading platforms to gaming and nonfungible tokens (NFTs). While it is technically a store that sells a certain number of products produced in Solana, it primarily serves as a retail-as-a-service tutorial hub where new users can obtain free instructional sessions on how to create a blockchain wallet and connect to various DApps.

Customers can purchase these items on the internet, and retailers are “renting” their space. This is a type of business that allows you to operate a shop with little upfront capital investment or technical knowledge. Retail-as-a-service includes businesses that exhibit products for customers who may buy them online. This encourages product display and reduces inventory requirements.

Norby opined that those who will have the most from the shop are individuals who have little or no prior knowledge of blockchain. He said that half of the customers on launch day either had previous expertise with Ether (ETH) or Bitcoin (BTC) or knew nothing about any of it.

The Solana Foundation funded the opening of the store with a grant, but each tutorial is sponsored by a blockchain project. Stepn, Orca, Solana Pay, Metaplex, and Magic Eden are among the projects that currently have courses at the shop. Customers who complete a course receive an NFT as a reward.