tl;dr: set to disrupt AT&T and Verizon, Helium picks up speed.
You pay for 24/7 internet access, but you don’t use it all 24 hours a day. And, when you do, you’re not using your full bandwidth.
In other words, you’re wasting money on excess capacity.
One of the transformative elements of this era, as Moore’s Law continues on, is that “edge computing” becomes increasingly more affordable and realistic, making powerful devices in your home a reality.
The yin-yang of that is in the Helium Network, a blockchain-powered wireless network that combines the Internet coverage in your home with edge computing, making wireless towers and “roof rights” a thing of the past.
How Helium Works
Helium is powered by nearly 20,000 devices (and growing at a crazy rate) around the world as people connect these small boxes (there are a variety in the store) to their home networks.
Once they place the device on the network and near a window, they are registered to the Helium blockchain and begin mining in a “Proof-of-Coverage” model.
Every time that a node participates in a “challenge” or a “consensus,” it is rewarded with HNT, Helium Network Token, the native currency of the network, which is currently trading at $4.40 per HNT.
I have 3 devices and, at current prices, I have returned 9x on my investment, though prices are volatile.
The good news is that the devices themselves use very little power.
That’s the technical side.
The Power of Helium
The real revolution of Helium comes in the use cases and pricing model.
As Helium’s network grows, it will cover larger and larger parts of the country/world with greater density, allowing for greater amounts of bandwidth traffic to be sent.
What is sent is any information about a mobile item.
So, for example, let’s say my brother-in-law wants to know where his 9 year old son is on his bike.
Instead of paying for a cell phone or some other GPS device, he can attach a Helium IOT device to the bike (or the kid) and for a fraction of the cost it would require to use a cellular network, he can use the Helium network instead.
As the world of IOT devices explodes and we want to track the whereabout of everything, a network like Helium becomes increasingly valuable since the volume of devices it can track at costs that are a fraction of existing models will become increasingly competitive.
How HNT Holders Benefit
And that’s where HNT holders benefit. As a community owned, cooperative wireless radio network, HNT holders benefits as usage increases.
In order to track my nephew, my brother in law is going to need to obtain HNT to pay for the service, even if it’s cheaper than Verizon, it’s not free.
So, he’ll use something called “Data Credits” which has an exchange rate for HNT.
The token economics is such that when he buys Data Credits, he’ll have to buy it from people like me who have them and then, when he uses them to track my nephew, he’ll spend them, which will return the HNT to me (and others), plus “burn” a few of them, thus increasing the value of the tokens by reducing supply.
Community Owned Business Models
Helium is just one example of how blockchain tech is making everything a community owned asset. It’s just for the wireless network.
By buying HNT or contributing to the network (through bandwidth and computing power) and thus earning it, thousands and, soon enough, millions of people around the world are building a true “People’s Network.”
