Helium, the blockchain-based wireless network for IoT devices will soon move from its custom blockchain to Solana, to tap into latter’s scalability and efficiency.
In an important development for both Solana (SOL) and Helium (HNT) ecosystems, the Helium Foundation recently announced that it would be migrating its mainnet to Solana blockchain. The decision was taken following a community vote, which went in its favour by an overwhelming 81% majority. The launch may happen as early as in Q4 of 2022.
While Helium’s data transfer and proof-of-coverage mechanisms will be ported to Helium oracles, its governance and tokens will be moved to Solana blockchain.
Helium is a decentralized wireless network that provides open-source coverage to low-powered IoT devices world over. It’s powered by its node operators who run 900,000+ hotspots for this purpose, all over the globe. As of writing, 1,000 new hotspots are being added to the Helium network on a daily basis. In the US alone, since the time Helium became active in August 2022, more than 2,500 hotspots have been deployed in 889 US cities.
Development comes on the heels of T-mobile partnership
The news of Solana migration comes close on the heels of Helium’s creator Nova Labs signing an agreement with T-mobile. It has collaborated with the American telecommunications giant to launch a new crypto-based mobile service called Helium mobile. The service will allow subscribers to earn token rewards by sharing data on coverage quality, thus helping in identification of Helium dead spots. Users would require a 5G mobile device to subscribe to this service.
Why Solana?
Solana is widely recognized as a third-generation blockchain for building new age decentralized applications (dApps). The daily transactions processed on Solana have grown exponentially from 100 million to 200 million per day, outperforming even Ethereum in Q2, 2022. In addition, starting May this year, the number of Solana users have gone past the 1 million figure and continue to grow.
Helium developers categorically recommended Solana citing its ability to improve scalability and operational efficiency of projects. They informed that among many benefits of moving to Solana, the most important ones are: more consistent mining, higher availability of HNT tokens to subDAO reward pools, better ecosystem support, more utility for subDAO and HNT tokens and more reliable data transfers.
Speaking about the move, Scott Siegel, COO, Helium Foundation said, “Solana has a proven track record powering some of the world’s most important decentralized initiatives and they were an obvious choice for us to partner with. Moving to the Solana blockchain allows us to focus our efforts on scaling the network as opposed to managing the blockchain itself.”
