Helium’s IOT token takes off in its first week since genesis

Submitted by Joey Wagner on Friday, April 28, 2023 - 18:44.

Before we dive into Helium’s new token and what it could mean for investors, miners, and adoption of the “people’s network” let us first recap how Helium became the world’s largest decentralized network of long-range radio hotspots dedicated to the internet of things and beyond.

Helium’s hectic history - 2021 the year of explosive growth

Nova Labs the makers of Helium is a network that got a lot of attention back in 2021 at the time new hotspots were onboarding as fast as the manufacturers could produce them. By the end of 2022 3,000 new hotspots were being added every single day and if more manufacturers existed at the time that number would have been much higher. The price also increased significantly for Helium’s native token HNT which at the start of 2021 was worth a little over a dollar. HNT would go on to briefly touch prices around $55 and would end the year with a price at approximately $37.

2022 the year of disappointment

If 2021 was the landmark year for Helium then 2022 would be the landslide year. A lot of changes were implemented that were supposed to boost the speed of the network by adding validators which were overpriced nodes that would begin to earn all the consensus rewards for the network. This year they also added light hotspots to the network, both additions were supposed to increase the speed and limit congestion in the fast-growing network. However, the blockchain was still undergoing constant halts and slowdowns and the validators appeared to be nothing more than a cash grab by Nova Labs. Then later in the year it was announced that helium would be taking the network off its own blockchain and migrating to Solana the first proposal of this Helium improvement protocol (HIP) 70 was first proposed at the end of August 2022. The stated reason was because even with the addition of validators and light hotspots the Helium blockchain was far from smooth, fast, and cheap and was encountering bugs on a almost monthly basis. By the end of 2021 HNT was worth around $1.70. With the addition of 22 new manufacturers for Helium hotspots and the loss of consensus rewards the amount of HNT earned by these hotspots came down considerably in 2022.

My own experience mining HNT

I onboarded a hotspot in March of 2021 and for the first month or two was earning between 1 and 1.75 HNT per day which at over $20 per coin at the time was excellent allowing me to recoup my investment of $500 in a few short months. This month before the switch to the Solana blockchain that same hotspot was earning roughly 3.5 HNT per month a far cry from the same time two years ago and with coins being worth around $1.80 it was not anything to be excited about. Although my earnings as most peoples are dismal and my earnings are roughly 150% more than the average hotspot, I still am happy to have it. It uses only 5 watts of electricity and takes up hardly a sliver of my bandwidth so costs are not even noticeable and equate to pennies a month and I find it exciting to be able to go onto my phone and view my hotspots performance in terms of earnings and even more so how many hotspots “deep white turkey” was witnessing. I live on Hawaii’s main island of Oahu and on several occasions, I would witness hotspot beacons from Maui roughly 300 kilometers away! But I as many others, saw the abandoning of Helium’s own layer 1 blockchain to onboard onto Solana’s layer 1 as disheartening. I certainly was not excited about my earnings being paid out in IOT tokens rather than HNT but after a week of earning IOT my feelings are quite optimistic for the future of hotspot mining for the first time in a long time.H

Helium’s price fluctuations and future

As you can probably tell Helium’s price has been on a rollercoaster for the past couple of years. In July 2020 one HNT was worth around $0.27 it would hit $4.50 six months later in February 2021 and reach above $17 just two months after that. After reaching an apex in November of 2021 at roughly $55 you would assume that today current price of roughly $1.75 shows that Helium’s aspirations were nothing more than a pipe dream and its decreased value clearly illustrates that. However, if you look closer at the timeline of its ascent and descent you will notice that HNT hit its apex price the same week that Bitcoin hit its own all-time high and although it held up better than all alt. coins that is to be expected as it is the originator of many concepts these alt. coins employ and has the longest and almost perfect track record of uptime and security.

With alt. coins such as HNT the risks are far greater than in BTC but the rewards can be as well.

Yes, HNT has dropped considerable value since its peak in November 2021 but so has every single cryptocurrency and 1000’s of altcoins have gone extinct in the same time frame. Very few are onboarding new features and use cases and I would say none other expect for Bitcoin’s lightening network are as promising as Helium’s.

A little over a week ago Solana announced that its Blockchain focused new 5g phone called “Saga” was officially being delivered to people who already placed orders before a certain cutoff date. The Saga phone is a sweet piece of tech and a landmark for crypto enthusiasts and adoption. Besides what you would expect from a $1000 phone like the latest Qualcomm chipset, 12 GB of ram, dual front cameras with a 50MP f/1.8 Wide + 12MP f/2.2 Ultrawide and 16 MP front facing camera the first of its kind phone has some features never offered on a cellular phone. The Saga comes with a built-in secure seed vault that does not interact with the main Android section of the CPU making it a truly secure seed vault to store your crypto assets. While having the security of a traditional cold wallet the Saga seed vault allows users to connect to their favorite hot wallets and make transactions with easy signing requiring just your fingerprint. But probably the coolest feature and most relevant to this article is every Saga comes with one month of Helium 5g coverage for free.