Bold ambitions for a restaurant and private members lounge in San Francisco, linked to non-fungible tokens (NFTs), have been abruptly abandoned. The project, which was under construction in Salesforce Park, was set to feature the “Sho Restaurant” and “Sho Club Sky Lounge.”
Access to the Sho Club Sky Lounge was exclusively reserved for holders of Sho Club NFTs, which were priced from $7,500 to $300,000 and offered future access to Sho Group’s hospitality offerings. Sho Group CEO Joshua Sigel recently revealed that the project couldn’t proceed, and the company terminated its lease agreement in July.
Despite strong interest, including millions of dollars in pre-sold and reserved memberships, concerns from potential investors about the future of San Francisco and rising construction costs proved insurmountable. Sigel cited various challenging macroeconomic factors, including labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, geopolitical uncertainty, and inflation, that drove construction costs to unsustainable levels.
Sho Group has refunded all NFT buyers as a result of this decision.
In another development, Binance’s NFT marketplace announced plans to discontinue support for Polygon-based NFTs, citing a decision to streamline product offerings. The Sandbox NFT Staking Program, which allowed users to stake Polygon-based LAND NFTs to earn SAND token rewards, will cease operations on September 26. Users will see their NFTs automatically unstaked and returned to their spot wallets. Support for the Polygon network will also end on the same day, with users given until December 31 to withdraw their Polygon NFTs from the marketplace.
Meanwhile, Reddit celebrated the new NFL season by launching NFL-themed NFT avatar collectibles for all 32 NFL teams. These NFTs were priced at $25 each and featured Reddit’s Snoo mascot in various team uniforms.
Additionally, NFT project Rumble Kong League partnered with NBA star Paul George and the popular brand Stance to release phygital basketball socks as part of the Hyper Socks collaborative project. This initiative aims to introduce a 3v3 basketball game with play-to-earn features. The project began with the sale of tokenized socks for use in the game. Later, Rumble Kong League offered 250 boxes of physical Stance socks themed with the project’s cartoon gorilla avatars.
In another development, the team behind NFT project OnChainMonkey is transitioning its entire collection of 10,000 NFTs from Ethereum to Bitcoin, a significant undertaking expected to span several months.
Additionally, the Base network’s “Onchain Summer” promotion resulted in over 700,000 NFTs being minted by more than 268,000 unique wallets, according to an announcement from the team.