The Helium blockchain has begun its migration to the Solana blockchain, marking a significant shift for the crypto connectivity project.
The move, which aims to make the project faster and cheaper to operate, involves a 24-hour process that will take Helium offline and recreate its key metrics on Solana. While Helium’s smart contracts will be unusable during the transition, the network is expected to start back up on Wednesday if all goes according to plan.
Helium has been attempting to globally deploy decentralized wireless infrastructure that relies on cryptocurrency as an incentive mechanism. Until the migration, its tokens have been living for nearly four years on the Helium blockchain, a custom layer 1 that lacked the broad appeal of Solana, Ethereum, and other smart contract platforms.
By moving to Solana, Helium aims to gain a wider audience and a more stable platform. It is also expected to offer a deeper pool of developers, as more developers are familiar with Solana blockchain’s coding language than Helium’s. During the transition period, token balances will be frozen until Helium’s new infrastructure on Solana comes online, but the network of data-sharing hotspots will continue to operate.