Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash

Currently, the Proof-of-Coverage Oracles collect all the witnesses for a beacon and randomly reward a selection of 14 witnesses. This HIP proposes to revert to rewarding the first 14 Hotspots responding to a beacon, incentivizing the most useful Hotspots to sensor traffic by prioritizing the low latency connections that sensors need for uplinks, downlinks, and join requests to work correctly.

Rewarding witnesses that are the first to respond will incentivize Hotspots to provide the low-latency connection that the sensors desperately need.

Sensors use uplinks to transfer their data over the Helium network. For a sensor to join the Helium network, it must perform a handshake that requires both an uplink and a downlink. As a power-saving measure, a sensor often has a limited time window to listen for the downlink.

Because the sensor only listens for the downlink for a limited time, the Helium LNS and the Hotspots must minimize latency to ensure the Hotspot can deliver downlinks to sensors within the narrow sensor listening window.

The Helium network originally rewarded the fastest witnesses and moved to a random selection for several technical reasons that no longer apply to the Oracle-based POC architecture introduced as part of HIP 70. Source : github

You may not be aware but there is a new Helium Improvement Proposal (HIP 83) that claims it will enhance the PoC mechanism. Currently, when a hotspot beacons 14 hotspot witness reports are randomly selected from all reports received during the PoC window which is 3 minutes. The HIP 83 proposal suggests rewarding the first 14 time stamped witness reports instead of 14 random witnesses as laid out by HIP 15.

The effect of HIP 83 will depend on the speed of your internet connection and your hotspot’s location. If your hotspot is located in an area where most beacons are witnessed by fewer than 14 hotspots you will be largely unaffected. If you are in a high density area with many hotspots witnessing beacons it’s possible that HIP 83 could have a very negative impact on your earnings. To see how your hotspot(s) witnesses would be affected use the heliumgeek link. https://heliumgeek.com/maps/hip83.html

All active hotspots are shown on the map. Find your hotspot to see how you will be affected. Red means significant loss, blue means significant gain, yellow means little to no change.

Heliumgeek also provides an analysis of impact by manufacturer with a witness count histogram. If you have a FreedomFi, LongAP, Dusun, Heltec, Midas, RisingHF, Pycom or Hummingbird hotspot you could be adversely affected.