Helium migrates its blockchain to Solana following the partnership with T-Mobile
On Thursday, the Helium Foundation announced that it would be moving its mainnet to the Solana blockchain following a community vote. According to the proposal, proof of coverage and data transfer mechanisms will be moved to Helium Oracles.
It’s official! The HIP 70 vote is over. #Helium will move to @Solana blockchain! pic.twitter.com/V2WIajou7R
— Helium (@helium) September 22, 2022
Meanwhile, Helium tokens and governance will be moved to those of the Solana blockchain. As the developers said, the benefits of this move would include more of its native HNT token available for subDAO reward pools, more consistent mining, more reliable data transfer, more utility for HNT and subDAO tokens and more ecosystem support.
Helium is a blockchain wireless communication protocol. The same week, Nova Labs, the creator of Helium, signed an agreement with US telecommunications provider T-Mobile to launch Helium Mobile, a crypto-powered mobile service that will allow subscribers to earn crypto rewards. Helium Mobile subscribers on this cellular plan can choose to earn token rewards for sharing coverage quality data and helping identify Helium dead spots nationwide. A 5G-enabled device is required.
As a decentralized wireless network, Helium provides open source coverage around the world. Since its launch in 2019, more than 900,000 hotspots using Helium have been deployed, with 1,000 units added daily. There are currently more than 2,500 active Helium hotspots with 5G in 889 US cities since the program became active in August 2022.
Solana, Helium’s new blockchain, is known as a hub for building decentralized applications. When considering voting transactions, Solana’s daily transactions grew from around 100 million to 200 million per day. The number of blockchain users exceeded one million as of May this year. Helium developers recommended the change due to Solana’s ability to improve operational efficiency and project scalability.
