Introduction
In 2013 Shawn Fanning, the former Co-Founder of Napster, Amir Haleem (former prof Gamer and Cypherpunk), and Sean Carey founded Helium. Helium was started with the vision to make it easy to connect devices and the belief that current solutions are not on the right path to solve that connectivity issue in the fast-growing Internet of Things (IoT) world. Decentralization is essential in the crypto world; the current IoT solutions are very centralized. Growing those solutions in a centralized way without a community is very capital intensive and challenging. Helium wants to change that and build a people's network. The Helium wireless network is one of the fastest-growing mobile networks ever.
You can join the network by deploying a simple device (comparable with a router) at your location and be part of the network. As a reward for helping to extend the network, you can earn $HNT Tokens, which is the native Token in the Helium Network. Any sensor can connect to the Helium network by using the Helium LongFi wireless protocol. This makes it possible to send small amounts of data over many kilometers.
As we learned, for running a Hotspot, you can earn HNT. HNT is burned to create Data Credits which are the fuel (transaction fees) on the network. If you are using the network, you require Data Credits to send sensor data and so on. Any LongFi enabled IoT device can send data through any Helium Hotspot. According to Statista, there are around 21.5 Billion interconnected IoT devices in the world. Those numbers are multiplying.
💡 The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of physical objects—"things" —. Those objects are equipped with sensors, software, and other technologies to connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet.
Full disclosure, I am not a Helium Miner yet, but I will start after publishing this article and order my first Mining devices. All the information I am providing here is from my (own, intensive) research rather than my own experience.
Problem & Solution
Helium provides the right mix of low power, high security, and robust coverage in urban locations. Jay Langhurst - Salesforce
Scaling Centralized IoT networks is challenging.
It is tough and expensive to build a centralized IoT Network.
Helium is building a decentralized IoT Network, where the community is helping to develop the network and getting rewards for the support. The Helium Hotspots are low-cost, low-energy devices that function as a wireless access point and a miner for the Helium Blockchain. The Helium Network grows very rapidly. At the moment, there are almost 230.000 hotspots in 140 countries installed. Alone in the last 30 days (Sept 2021), 58.000 new hotspots were added, which is a couple of thousand Helium Hotspot Miners per day. Considering that the hardware producers can not keep up with productions, this is remarkable.
A small range of WiFI and Mobile Internet
The Helium Network uses LongFi, which combines the Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) with the Helium Blockchain. You can connect any LoRaWAN device to the Helium Network and transfer data over it.
Short Range, high throughput 5G Network hard to build
Even for the big Telecommunication Companies, it is not easy to build the needed infrastructure to build a global 5G network.
With the decentralized community approach, Helium Inc can outgrow centralized solutions as long the rewards and getting paid with the Helium Cryptocurrency is attractive enough for the community for building coverage.
Now let's have a look at the Technology behind it.
Helium Project details, Components & Technology
Proof of Coverage
Helium is a decentralized, open wireless network that is built on a new blockchain for the physical world.
The whole network is based on proof of coverage (PoC) and a consensus mechanism based on the HoneyBadger (BFT) Consensus Mechanism. Proof of Coverage (PoC) is a Proof of Work (PoW) algorithm that uses radio waves to validate the Hotspots Wireless Network Coverage.
The PoC Challenge constantly tests the Hotspots by nearby hotspots. LongFi packets are decrypted and transmitted over the Helium Network to prove the quality of the wireless coverage.
Helium Hotspots are earning Helium Tokens ($HNT) for sending valid coverage proofs and witnessing challenges.
Helium Consensus Protocol
The Helium development team was focussing on the following characteristics while designing the protocol.
- Permissionless
Any Hotspot following the consensus rules and network specifications can participate in the Helium network.
- Truly decentralized by design
- Byzantine Fault Tolerant
Consensus can still be reached as long as a threshold of participants is acting honestly. - Based on useful work
- High rate of confirmed transactions
Short Block Confirmation Times. - Censorship-resistant transactions
Hotspots should be able to "censor" transactions to be included in a block.
Mining rewards are distributed at the end of each epoch.
Helium LongFi
LongFi is a protocol making it possible to connect thousands of IoT devices to a Hotspot in a Peer-to-Peer way. It combines the LoRaWAN with the Helium blockchain.
LongFi is used to communicate with:
- Helium-compatible devices/sensors on the network
- and other Hotspots
This can be used to exchange any kind of sensor data, such as tracking the location of valuable items (Lime), measuring air quality, and many more.
LongFi is not designed for high-bandwidth needs. Compared to WiFi networks, an extended range of more than 200x while using next to no energy. There is also no need for a central authority. Everything works Peer-2-Peer.
Data Credits
To pay for the usage of the Helium network, you need so-called Data Credits (DC). Data Credits are the only accepted payment on the People's Network.
Data Credits have a fixed price of 1 Data Credit = $0.00001 ( 1 burned $ in HNT creates 100.000 DC) and are not transferrable. Data credits are generated by burning HNT Tokens. The burned HNT Tokens are permanently removed from the circulating supply.
Helium Console
The Helium Console is a web-based device management tool.
It allows developers to
- register
- authenticate,
- and manage (structure via labels and user-level permissions and utilization of data credits); their devices on the Helium network.
Besides device management, you also have prebuilt connections available. This makes it easier to route device data via HTTPS or MQTT.
💡MQTT is an OASIS standard messaging protocol for the Internet of Things (IoT). It is designed as an extremely lightweight publish/subscribe messaging transport that is ideal for connecting remote devices with a small code footprint and minimal network bandwidth.
Helium Hotspots
Those hotspots do not submit WiFi signals but, LongFi signals consume next to no electricity (5 Watt) and can transmit the signal up to a few kilometers. This depends highly on the location and the antenna of the Hotspot.
Using the Helium App, you can remotely control, see the status, earnings, and manage your Helium Hotspot. For now, you can buy a Helium Hotspot if you are located in North America or Europe.
It was possible to build your Hotspot and join the Helium Network and earn rewards. For now, Helium discontinued the program that allows DIY Hotspots to mine Helium Tokens.
More details on Helium Hotspots you will find further down.
5G for Helium
In HIP 27 was proposed and accepted that Helium will be the first consumer-owned 5G network globally.
💡HIP stands for Helium Improvement Process. Anyone can make a written proposal to the community, and the community will vote on it and approve or disapprove.
5G is coming to the Helium Network. You should be able to use your Cellphone to send a Text message or watch Youtube. Helium is Partnering with FreedomFi to build the hardware. The Hotspot will be equipped with 5G and LoWanRadio. The Radio protocol will be used for doing the Blockchain things. For now, it's unclear how it will be dealt with massive 5G packages.
Use Cases
Smart Agriculture, Smart Cities, Environment Monitoring, Logistics and Supply Chain, Smart Water Monitoring are major applications.
- Agulus offers tools for automated agriculture. They are using Helium's network to automate water distribution based on wireless sensors connecting to the Helium Hotspots.
- Lime offers bike and scooter-sharing services across the world. Lime uses the Helium network to track and find their bikes and scooters.
- Careband offers consumers wireless wristbands to monitor the location and temperature of individuals working in hospital or office environments to help track contacts related to COVID-19. Careband uses Helium to track the locations of wristbands.
- They are transforming logistics operations into a smart digital system. Cost-effective, end-to-end tracking and monitoring solutions will help to optimize the operational processes.
- Helium Network is the base for a global IoT education initiative.
How to be a part of the Helium Movement?
Mine
You can mine HNT by installing a Hotspot device in your home or your office.
Hotspots provide kilometers of wireless network coverage for millions of IoT devices near your location using Helium LongFi.You will receive a reward paid in HNT. All this happens with a low energy usage of 5 Watts and an Internet Connection. For the usage of five Watts, the yearly electricity cost will be around $10 or €10. The costs depend on your tariff for electricity. The data usage of a helium miner can come to approximately 20 to 40 Gigabytes per month. To put that in context, if you stream one hour of Netflix in HD, your data Usage is around 3 GB, so if you watch around five movies per month in HD, you are everywhere at the same Data Volume.
Here you find a list of Hotspots that the community has approved of the Helium Manufacturing Committee. They are responsible for onboarding new vendors. The list is not equal to an endorsement or a recommendation.
Helium Hotspots
The most popular Hotspot at the moment is the Bobcat Miner 300. There are many different models for different regions, with varying types of Antennas available. There are Outdoor and Indoor Models.
Bobcat Miner 300
Regions: Europe (EU868), North America (US915)
Current Delivery Times: 12 - 20 weeks
Price: $ 429 (excl. VAT)
Includes: bobcat (hard to purchase), excellent 4dpi antenna
Bobcat Miner seems to be the most popular.
Controlling Hotspot
Regions: Europe (EU868)
Current Delivery Times: 8 - 12 weeks (Jan 2022) Timeline
Price: € 499 (excl. VAT)
Includes: 2.2dBi LoRa 868MHz Antenna (can be upgraded), Dashboard Feature
freedom (5G)
Regions: North America (US915)
Current Delivery Times: Waiting list
RAK Hotspot Miner
Regions: unclear
Current Delivery Times: coming soon https://getmntd.com/
Price: unclear
FXTec Linxdot
Regions: Europe (EU868), North America (US915), Australia (AU915)
Current Delivery Times:( shipping late Jan 2022) T
Price: € 499 (excl. VAT)
Includes: 3dBi LoRa antenna, Power adapter (UK, EU, US), Web-based diagnostics and Management
Kerklink Miners
Regions: Europe (EU868), North America (US915), UK
Current Delivery Times: sold out
Price: € 382 - 765 (excl. VAT)
Long
Preorder soon.
Heltec Indoor Hotspot
Regions: Europe (EU868), North America (US915), Australia (AU915)
Current Delivery Times: 30 days after payment
Price: $ 544 (excl. payment fee, shipment)
Out of stock at the moment - Waiting list
Regions: Current Delivery Times:
Price: € 499
Syncrobit
Regions: Europe (EU868), North America (US915), Australia (AU915)
Current Delivery Times: Preorder, Q1 2022
Price: $ 650 (excl. payment fee, shipment)
Nebra
Regions: Europe (EU868), IN865, RU864, North America (US915), Australia (AU915), China (CN470)
Models: Indoor Hotspot & outdoor Hotspot
Current Delivery Times: Currently Sold out
Price: $570 - $734 (incl. VAT)
ClodPi
Price:
Pisces
Regions: Europe (EU868)
Models: Outdoor Hotspot
Current Delivery Times: 11-19 weeks
Price: $580
Here you can find a regularly updated Reddit Post with availabilities in different regions for different miners.
What to consider when you are starting to mine Helium?
Horizontal and Vertical Location is crucial for mining Helium. It's not good if there are too many hotspots in your immediate area, but also not if there is none. The best-case scenario for a hotspot is many hotspots around it, but not within 300 meters. Here on the hotspotty map, you can check the coverage in your area.
Isolated hotspots can still earn rewards but not much, so if you start in a rural area where no hotspots are yet, it is way more lucrative (40- 60 HNT per week if you have nothing around you) if you place two of them. The two miners should be 300 to 600 meters apart from each other, so putting both of them in your house /apartment is not an option. Maybe you could ask a neighbor or a friend living nearby and cover their internet connection costs or offer a revenue share model as a goodie. If you can, four to six Hotspots are even better. The cost of electricity could not be more than one USD / Euro per month if they ask.
You could also ask businesses if they are willing to place your hotspots, but maybe you need to sell them differently. You could offer to set up the infrastructure for free to connect their IoT devices like door sensors, parking sensors to make it more interesting for them. With the Philipps Hue, you are also not selling the hub; you need the hub to get it to work. At Jimmy is Promo Youtube Channel, you find more great videos around that topic.
What is a good place for my Helium Miner?
In the world of radio waves, you always get the best results if you are high and not close to the metal. The Hotspot itself can be inside, but it helps if you can put an antenna on your roof. If you do not have an outdoor Hotspot or Antenna, you can place your Hotspot Model next to the window. They should be able to see the sky, so ideal is if there are no walls or trees between the device and the sky. Glass is ok. The radio wave needs a runway to get started; you can compare that to an airplane.
Here at Hotspotrf.com under Cloud-RF you can calculate your line of sight.
What are the best Antennas for my Helium Miners?
Depending on your location, different kinds of antennas are better.
If you are in a suburb or rural area and there are not many other hotspots around you, an 8dbi antenna is probably the best choice since it has the most extended reach. In the urban area, 3dbi are good because they have a good reach around you. You can imagine their reach is more like the shape of an umbrella. The signal is going up and out. 5dbi antennas are a good middle man, with a bit further reach than the 3dbi.
Is it still worth it to start Mining Helium?
This depends on your motivation. If you want to be part of building the People's Network, HELL YEAH. Just do it, order some miners and be part of this great project.
If you want to make money or build a Passive Income Stream, the answer is a bit more complicated. It mostly depends on your location or where you can place your Helium miners.
But in general, the answer is also yes. The most complicated part is to get one of the Helium Hotspot Miner and get started. At the moment, there are months of waiting times to get your device and get started with the process.
If you have a great location and can build a cluster of Hotspots, Helium mining is still very profitable, and it still is for a while, in my opinion. Keep in mind that at the moment, we are mainly getting paid for building up the network. In the future, you will still get rewarded for the usage of the network. Many miners report that they break even within one month with their mining activity. If you are in a bad location and start with an isolated mining device, it can take a couple of months or a year to break even and get back the hardware costs. Also, not so bad, right?
You can check the Profitability of Helium in your area with Hotspot.
Stake as a Validator
Validators are a new entity (introduced in HIP25) and were introduced because of the rapid growth of the Peer Network. They perform verifying transactions and add new blocks to the blockchain. Validators will be servers that contain the blockchain's full node so that the hotspots do not need to hold them anymore, and the chatter between the Hotspots is reduced.
You have to stake 10.000 $HNT to be able to be a validator. There is no possibility to delegate your HNT Tokens to a validator, and you have to be online all the time. If you do not manage to stay online, you will be penalized and earn fewer rewards. After you unstake your HNT, there is around a five-month unlock period. After the period is over, your HNT will be transferred to your wallet.
At the moment, there are 2718 validators, and the APY is around seven percent.
Use
You can start using the network today. All you need is to choose a LoRaWAN compatible sensor and start implementing your Use Case from Asset Tracking to Checking Air or Water Quality. You can manage your IoT device in the Helium Console, available as a hosted or self-hosted version. After that, you can already start analyzing your Device Data in the Console. There is already a couple of integration to your favorite tools available.
Compared to Teleco solutions, you do not need a SIM Card, there are no data caps, or you will not be charged any additional fees. You pay based on the device usage—no need to deploy and maintain a wireless infrastructure. The usage of the Helium Network is also cheaper compared to the use of cellular.
Many companies like Lime, Salesforce, CareBand, Airly, the One Planet Education Network, and more use the Helium Network.
$HNT Token
Category: Internet of Things (IoT), Communication
Native
General Emission Type: Burn & Mint
Precise Emission Type: Burn & Mint Equilibrium
Price: $20.66
Max Supply: 223.000.000
Circulating Supply: 97.914.898
Market Cap: $ 2.034.063.708
Fully Diluted Marketcap: $ 4.632.555.572
$HNT minted per month: 5.000.000
Block Time (targeted): 60 seconds
Epoch size (targeted): 30 blocks / 30 mins
Minted $HNT per epoch (targeted): 3424 HNT
Utility of the $HNT Helium Token
There are two primary use cases of the Helium Token.
Rewarding Hotspots
Participants of the network are rewarded for building out and securing the network.
The basis for Data Credits (DCs)
Data Credits are produced by burning Helium Tokens. Those Data Credits are used to pay transaction fees on the network.
How to earn Helium $HNT Tokens?
In general, the HNT Tokens are earned for building and securing the network infrastructure and transferring device data. The distributed amount of HNT depends on the type of work that was done. The validation is done by the PoC (Proof of Coverage) algorithm.
To participate in PoC, Hotspots receive instructions to transmit information to other Hotspots to see and verify. These single-hop challenges are called 'beacons'. Hotspots with no neighbors earn less as they have to issue challenges and can't have their beacon verified.
There are five ways how Helium Hotspots can earn HNT:
1. Network Data Transfer: up to 35% of the distribution (up to 607 HNT per epoch)
A hotspot transfers data packages using the network. There is a proportional reward of the overall share of data transferred.
2. Proof-of-Coverage: 5,2% of the distribution (87,15 HNT per epoch)
Hotspots get rewards for validating their peer hotspots' wireless coverage. The amount of money each person makes depends on how often they are involved in Proof-of-Coverage activity.
3. Witnesses: 20,08% of the distribution (348,61 HNT per epoch)
Hotspot gets rewarded for monitoring and reporting Proof-of-Coverage Activity (beacons).
4. Consensus Group:
Hotspots validate transactions and publish new blocks. If a hotspot can participate in the consensus process is based on a reputation score.
5. Challengers: 0,9% of the distribution (around 15,6 HNT per epoch)
Hotspots are chosen as the network to encrypt messages over the Internet to a target group of Hotspots. Proof-of-Coverage uses these challenges to validate wireless coverage.
33 % (573 HNT) go to the Security Token owners and 6 % to the Consensus Group (104 HNT)
$HTN Token Metrics - 13. Oct 2021
Price: $ 19,32
Circulating Supply: 99.425.776
Max Supply: 223.000.000
MarketCap: $ 1.900.566.160
Fully Diluted Valuation: $ 4.306.049.399
MarketCap Rank:17
All-time high: $ 26.43
All-time low: $ 0.113248
Trading Volume / MarketCap: 0.0044
Tokenomics
There was no ICO where you could buy HNT tokens, and non of the circulating Tokens were pre-mined. Approximately 5,000,000 new HNTs are generated per month. The estimated time to reach the maximum supply is around 50 years from now on.
Helium Security Tokens (HST) have been sold to investors from 2014 to 2020, from which the Helium team raised a total of 55 Mill USD. The holders of HST are entitled to 34% of all mining rewards.
The investments were happening as follows:
- Seed Round $2,8 M for Equity
- Series A $16 M for Equity
- Series B $ 20 M for Equity
- Series C $ 15 M for Equity
Distribution in the first year
5,000,000 HNT are generated through mining every month. Every 30 to 60 minutes at the end of a mining period, the rewards are distributed.
- 30% for Network Data Transfer
- 35% for Hotspot Infrastructure
- 35% going to Helium, INC, and Investors
$HNT distribution over time
Over time, the distribution of HNT is linked to the needs of the network.
Over time the Hotspots earn more for transferring device data on the network while Helium Inc. and investors earn less. After some time, the distribution is not changing anymore.
Helium Roadmap and Events
Helium Mainnet Launch
Date: July 2019
Type: Mainnet Launch
Helium blockchain Mainnet goes live
Austin, TX Network Launch
Date: July 2019
The first city-wide Helium network is deployed in Austin, TX
Open Sourcing of Helium network components
Date: October 2019
Helium released most components of the network as open-source software and hardware. This includes the Helium blockchain, the LongFi wireless protocol, various hardware schematics, developer client libraries, hardware schematics, and cloud APIs.
San Francisco, CA Network Launch
Date: October 2019
New York, NY Network Launch
Date: November 20
Plans for the Second Half of 2021
Validators (HIP25)
- Enable Light Hotspots to use Validators - push to H2
- Further, increase the Consensus Group size
- Continue to streamline user experience to become a Validator
- Explore Overtaking/Slashing based on community experience
Blockchain
- Explore alternative settlement layers on other chains
Hotspots
- Staking Integration with App
- Explorer - plugins from cloudRF to estimate coverage
- Explorer Testnet view
- Hotspot app Testnet View
Wallet
- Hotspot recommendations to extend coverage
- Log into Explorer
- Multiple Accounts
- Backup Export private keys
Tabs/Mappers
The Helium Mappers allow the community members to measure and log Helium Network coverage.
- Transform into Coverage Explorer
- Tabs dead zone mapping
- Capture Hex Game
Light Hotspots
Light Hotspots are Hotspot variants of current hotspots with limited onboard compute, relying on cloud services for mining activities.
- use Helium wallet to onboard helium hotspot
- allow light hotspots to witness PoC challenges and earn HNT
- allow light hotspots to receive challenges from validators
- begin the transition from existing hotspots to light hotspots
Console
The console is a device onboarding and management platform. It combines a web-based management tool and a full LoRaWAN Network Server that communicates with the Helium Blockchain.
- Launch Console 2.0
- Update derived from usage metrics
- Continue integration with leading IoT Services / Platforms
Wireless Protocols
Currently, The Helium Network supports only the LoRaWAN wireless protocol, but the blockchain itself is frequency/protocol agnostic.
- Alternative Wireless Protocols ( Ongoing)
People
The Helium Project was started in 2013 by Jean Fanning, the Co-Founder of Napster, a legend in the Filesharing Space.
Helium Inc has a small and efficient team of 90 people and is building a great community supporting the project. The most significant part of the team is located in the United States. The whole Helium project is open source.
Founders & Team
Haleem has an active eSports and game development background. One of the first peer-to-peer (P2P) internet services in the late 1990s was created by Fanning, and he is well known for it.
Amir Haleem - CEO & Founder (LinkedIN)
- Former CEO at Diversion, Director at Global Gaming League, Lead Game Designer at EA Digital Illusions.
- former professional gamer
- Cypherpunk
Mark Nijdam - CTO (LinkedIn, Github)
- tech leader with 25 years of experience
Frank Mong - COO (LinkedIn, Github)
- sales, marketing, and business development
- 20 years in cyber security
- CMO at Hortonworks
- SVP of Marketing at Palo Alto Networks
- VP/GM of security at HP.
Sean Carey - Founder (Twitter)
- Cloud Guy
- Scotch & Cigars
Shawn Fanning - Founder & Adviser
- Napster co-founder
- Programmer, Angel Investor, Entrepreneur
Andrew Thompson - VP Engineering (Github)
Mark Phillips - VP BusDev (LinkedIn)
Investors
An Internet group is creating innovative digital contexts combining core competencies in Information, Marketing, and Financial Technology.
Location: Tokyo
Founded Date: 1995
Number of Employees: 100-1000
FirstMark Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm that partners with exceptional entrepreneurs.
Location: United States
Founded Date: 2008
Number of Employees: 10-100
GV
GV, formerly Google Ventures, is the venture capital investment arm of Alphabet Inc. and provides seed, venture, and growth-stage funding to technology companies.
Location: Mountain View, CA, United States
Founded Date: 2009
Number of Employees: 20
Investments: Ripple
A venture capital firm that supports early- and late-stage investments and a seed fund for developing very early-stage experiments established in 2004 by Vinod Khosla, who helped create Sun Microsystems
Location: Menlo Park, CA, United States
Founded Date: 2004
Number of Employees: 10-100
A thesis-driven crypto fund offering LPs venture capital economics with all the advantages of public market liquidity
Location: Austin, Texas, United States
Founded Date: 2017
Number of Employees: 10-100
Slow Ventures Angel.co LinkedIn
The most powerful ideas, companies, and industries aren't created overnight. With a community built on the collective experience and fueled by curiosity, Slow understands the entrepreneurial journey. Slow gives founders the resources, connections, experiences, and empathy required to build strong, sustainable companies by investing at the center of Technology and on the edges of science, society, and culture.
Location: San Francisco, CA, United States
Founded Date: 2011
Number of Employees: 11-50
Investments: Chia Network, Ampleforth, Helium, TrustToken, Basis, Solana
USV is a small, collegial partnership that manages over $1B across seven funds.
Location: New York, United States
Founded Date: 2003
Number of Employees: 10-100
Investments: Flow, Algorand, Stacks, Helium, Arweave, Hiro PBC
Here you can read more about the investment.
- an early investor in the project (6 million round)
- raised $ 2.2 billion for its Crypto fund (2021)
- invested in tons of projects, e.g., Keep, Solana, Opensea, Ripple, Dfinity, Helium
- exited Airbnb, Asana, Box, DigitalOcean, Facebook, Lyft, Zynga, Coinbase, Slack, and many more.
Network Stats & Growth Numbers
2020
- deployment of 7000 Hotspots
- 31.Dec 2020 price $1,35
2021
- 175.000 Hotspots across 123 countries
- 500.000 Hotspots in backorders
- Fifty new manufacturers are waiting to be approved to build and sell Helium-compatible hardware.
- 14. Oct 2021 Price: $19,99
Summary
The Helium network is in severe competition to established Telecommunication Cooperations. They are building a two-sided marketplace to provide connectivity for the estimated 22 billion IoT devices worldwide. With thousands of Hotspots added every day, Helium is the fastest growing network on earth. Would not it be just amazing to be part of this movement and make money with it?
You can join the Peoples Network as a Miner by setting up hardware and helping to build the infrastructure or use the network to track your assets, pets, or air quality, as many companies like Lime already do. As a network infrastructure provider, you get rewarded with $HNT Tokens, and to use the network, you are paying with your Data Credits (DC) Token.
Adding 5G to their network will bring many other Use Cases to the Helium Network. It is not clear yet what is precisely coming with the 5G extension. All we know is that the first Hotspots were built by their Partner FreedomFi. Exciting times are coming.
The team is small but seems to be very efficient. The progress is also good, thanks to a very dedicated community and great partnerships. All this is needed if you want to keep up with the speed of growth.
We are not part of the network yet, but as we speak, we are researching the best Hotspots for our purpose, and we will order them in the next week to start Mining 2022.
Let's have a look at potential risks.
Risks
- small team with dependency on the community ( could also be a plus)
- there is a worldwide shortage of computer chips that could last for a couple of years. Not easy for Hardware producers.
- Privacy risks with installed 3rd party hotspots due to expansion of the production.
- a big part of the rewards goes to investors
- very long waiting time for hardware orders
- Varying Quality of Hardware Partnerships
Potential
- the community is solid and dedicated
- great founders team
- super fast-growing network of people with thousands of Hotspots added every day
- very lucrative if you have a great location
- hard to be replaced once the network grows to a certain size since there are millions of physical locations
- With close to (just) two Billion Marketcap there is still a great potential for growth
- No real decentralized competition in the Crypto Space
- Potential for decentralized growth
- Great investors like Andreessen Horowitz and many more
- fully decentralized IoT and 5G network around the world
Resources
Website https://www.helium.com/
Blog https://blog.helium.com/
Helium Coverage Map https://hotspotty.net/ (Former Helium.place)
Helium Hotspots explorer.helium.com/hotspots
Useful Helium Statistics https://www.sitebot.com/helium/summary
Github https://github.com/helium/
HIPs https://github.com/helium/HIP
Coingecko https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/helium
Whitepaper http://whitepaper.helium.com/
Helium Explorer https://explorer.helium.com/
Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/HeliumNetwork/
Twitter https://twitter.com/helium
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/heliumsystems/
Disclaimer
This website includes information about cryptocurrencies and other financial instruments. All these areas are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money. We are NOT giving financial or investment advice; this page is for educational and informational purposes only. Please be careful and make sure that you understand how these instruments work. Also, think about whether you can afford to take the risk of losing your money.
Weirdo.Rocks encourage you to do your own research before you make any investment decision.
