Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash
The one thing that I have learned from being part of the Helium Network community is that participants are very passionate and vocal.
Spend five minutes on the Helium Subreddit and you will see both ends of the spectrum. There will be those that declare Helium to be a scam or a Ponzi scheme. Every day there is someone that insists that this is a “ dead project “ and that the network has no value.
On the other hand there are those who believe in the value of the network both in the short and long term. Those who have the vision to see what the future could hold.
Why is there so much animosity surrounding the Helium Network ?
Early adopters did very well, the majority did not even ROI.
The Helium Network started the year 2021 with 14,000+ hotspots on the network. The introduction of new Makers approved by Helium Improvement Proposal 19 (HIP 19) had 25 approved Makers producing hotspots by the end of 2021.
Approximately 3,000 hotspots were being added every day to the network and by year’s end 450,000 hotspots were deployed.
In the meantime the price of the HNT token went from $1.35 on 1/1/2021 to $52.70 by mid — November.
Makers could not produce hotspots fast enough to meet the demand. It was a digital gold rush and those fortunate enough to have a hotspot online in a premium location early 2021 did very well for themselves. The rewards decreased throughout the year as it went from 14K hotspots to 450K hotspots sharing the same reward bucket.
Many were caught up in the fray and ordered multiple miners which were delivered a year later well after the HNT token reached it’s all time high or never took delivery at all.
Hotspots were selling for 3X retail on sites like Ebay and with the HNT token trading at an all time high they went fast.
Frankly, I can understand how someone in this situation as described could be very soured and discouraged even though Helium was not directly responsible for the shortages which caused delayed miner shipments.
The Deny List
One of the key features of the Helium Network is its built-in Denylist, which is a mechanism for preventing spam and abuse on the network. The Denylist is a decentralized list of addresses that have been flagged for spamming or other malicious behavior. These addresses are then prevented from participating in the network and earning rewards.
Recent reports have surfaced of individuals being added to the Helium Network’s Denylist without justification. This includes individuals who have not engaged in any actions that would be considered trying to exploit the system. If you have been added to the Denylist mistakenly, you can submit a request for removal through the following link: https://docs.helium.com/mine-hnt/denylist-removals
Hotspots that game the system are self-serving and of no value to the network. Bad actors take from the rewards bucket decreasing rewards for legitimate hotspots. These addresses are prevented from participating in the network and earning rewards when they end up on the deny list.
There are many reports that the deny list includes individuals who have not engaged in any actions that would be considered gaming or trying to exploit the system. The Helium hotspot deny list is a community-driven blacklist which any member of the network can submit additions on Crowdspot.io.
I just saw that you have deny listed two of our HS which are perfectly real and positioned high up in the mountains, that’s why they have witnessed so many. Unfortunately, those who made the report fell into a very serious mistake and do not know at all the area which, being very high, allows for large coverage.
You can verify this by looking at all the surrounding HS that have a high Witnessed count.
I believe that this report was made by some competitor in the area who wants to damage us so please delete our HS from the deny list immediately.
There is no doubt that the algorithm catches cheaters. The fact is it also produces a “ false positive “ for a percentage of innocent miners. You can see this in the comments on Discord or the threads on Reddit.
The move to Solana
There were some in the community that thought it was a terrible mistake to abandon the Helium L1 blockchain and make the move to Solana which had a notorious reputation for outages. Although the community passed the proposal with an 81% vote there was plenty of grumbling on Reddit and Discord.
Migrating the Helium Network to Solana offers significantly more utility for the network, including faster transaction speeds and new smart contract capabilities. And now that core developers will no longer have to maintain a layer-1 blockchain, the Helium Foundation and other contributing organizations can direct more resources towards our shared goals of accelerating the growth of decentralized wireless networks and bringing new applications that create economic efficiencies and close the digital divide.
The bear market
The bear market of 2022 was enough to sap anyone’s enthusiasm towards crypto projects. The sentiment of the Helium community followed a trajectory that paralleled the price of the HNT token. HNT was trading around $40 in January of 2022 and by the end of the year was trading at $1.50.
Miners who had multiple hosted hotspots could no longer afford to pay their hosts and still turn a profit so payments were stopped and hotspots were unplugged or simply went offline.
Lack of interest in the project is bad enough that some members of the Helium community did not even realize that the transition to Solana had taken place until some time after the fact.
I believe the Helium network will not only survive, but will flourish in the future
The move to Solana was an intelligent move to make for the Helium community. The move incorporated a number of technical changes that will benefit not only network users but also the community.
Some of the benefits are smart contract functionality, transaction fees that are a fraction of what they used to be, and access to DeFi. The Helium wallet app allows access to more markets and the opportunity to recieve rewards for providing liquidity.
The network speed and scalability of the Solana network was another big factor in making to move to a different blockchain. For the Helium network to grow and in the future be able to process millions of daily transactions operating on a blockchain like Solana is a necessity.
It has been said with new technology that we overestimate it in the short term and under estimate it in the long term. I believe that is the case with Helium. Due to the exuberance of the 2021 bull market the HNT token price exceeded the utility of network by multiples.
I am bullish long term not just on the Helium network, but also on the LoRaWAN and decentralized wireless industry.
LoRaWAN’s market dominance is best illustrated by LoRa Alliance members’ solutions that scale across a wide variety of vertical markets, use cases, reach and availability of LoRaWAN. Below are just a few examples of the thousands of LoRaWAN solutions deploying around the world:
Everynet continues to expand its massive IoT buildout across the United States with its LoRaWAN network delivering coast-to-coast coverage, reaching more than 550 cities, which includes more than 130 logistics points. Its robust network offers dense coverage in urban areas, while long-range connectivity delivers coverage across key logistics points.
The Helium Network and Senet have completed an integration between their networks, making 850,000 Helium-compatible hotspots across 170 countries available to Senet customers and creating the largest globally managed LoRaWAN network.
National Narrowband Network Co. (NNNCo) has signed a contract with technology provider Wellness TechGroup to deploy a citywide LoRaWAN network in Montevideo, Uruguay to support 1.3 million people with 70,000 smart streetlights and create an infrastructure-based network for other smart city initiatives (to add endless use cases to the network), while reducing carbon emissions by up to 80%.
The Things Industries (TTI) and Connexin are deploying 150,000 smart meters across Coventry and Warwickshire in the U.K. The project aims to provide accurate real-time water usage data to enable more precise billing and reduce the risks of water leakage on physical sites.
Talkpool sensors use LoRaWAN connectivity through Netmore to provide building damage prevention solutions using wireless LoRaWAN sensor devices that are easy to install and scale quickly using nationwide LoRaWAN network coverage. The companies have deployed 1,000 LoRaWAN gateways that transmit 960,000 messages per day, providing readings for temperature and humidity, water leakage and smart floor drains. Providing that data enables new revenue streams and improved customer service.
Additional examples are highlighted below:
Birdz and Actility are working jointly on a 3M LoRaWAN water meter deployment through their OBS ties, which use Actility to operate their French nationwide LoRaWAN network, and had agreed with Birdz-Veolia to use it for this project
Red Sea Giga Project connects its 36,000-person construction workforce and 3,000 vehicles in real time with Actility and Abeeway
Cellnex LoRaWAN Networks deployed with Omnium for water management in Spain will connect >300,000 sensors
GreenField Direct’s LoRaWAN leak protection solution is transmitting 125,000 messages per day using 16,000 devices over 300 gateways to minimize damages and reduce insurance premiums
Everynet delivers national LoRaWAN networks in 10 countries around the world, including covering more than 82% of GDP in Indonesia and 67% of GDP in Brazil, helping to enable the digital transformation of cities, utilities, and industry
Microshare’s EverSmart Clean deployment of 9,000 devices has transmitted more than 10 million messages covering building occupancy, movement and customer feedback
Milesight is providing Quebec’s schools with air quality monitoring, with nearly 50,000 sensors transmitting to 2600 gateways, sending more than 7 million messages over LoRaWAN to date
Renesas has deployed a LoRaWAN smart building solution with 10,000+ sensors and 90 gateways that monitor conditions, occupancy, metering and load control, heat exchanger maintenance and more, saving a major furniture retailer 30% on its energy costs
Senet is unlocking innovation in Tampa Florida with expansive public LoRaWAN network covering over 1,600 square miles with more than 50 towers
Talkpool is using LoRaWAN connectivity through TEKTELIC to provide superior air quality monitoring and HVAC optimization using 10,000 devices and 100 gateways that have handled nearly 1M messages
CRA and TEKTELIC build a LoRaWAN network providing coverage across the Czech Republic using more than 500 gateways to achieve >80% coverage of the country
Urbana Smart Solutions’ IoT platform manages the public lighting systems for municipalities in Sicily over a LoRaWAN network using 20 gateways to carry nearly one-half million messages daily
EchoStar’s LoRaWAN IoT program already spans more than 10,000 devices, with the service expected to scale to millions of devices in Europe alone
Actility deploys smart gas metering in the Eskisehir Organized Industry Zone, the second largest industrial cluster in Turkey with a LoRaWAN network covering a 32 km. sq. area
