The migration of Helium, the world’s largest decentralized wireless network, to the Solana blockchain marks a significant milestone that brings in a new era of scalability, reliability, and growth for the network.
In 2019, Helium launched with the objective of creating a secure and accessible decentralized wireless network for global use. To establish the network, they used their own blockchain as the foundation. Currently, Helium has nearly one million hotspots deployed, covering more than 77,000 towns and cities across 192 countries. As a result, it is the largest LoRaWAN network worldwide.
Migrating to Solana will provide the Helium network with faster transaction speeds, new smart contract capabilities, and more opportunities for utility. Helium’s core developers will be relieved of the responsibility of maintaining a layer-1 blockchain, giving them more resources to boost the growth of decentralized wireless networks and develop new applications that promote economic efficiencies and bridge the digital divide.
By migrating to Solana, Helium can now introduce dynamic markets to allocate rewards based on regional demand, resulting in lower costs for users. Additionally, average transaction fees will be reduced to $0.00025. This upgrade has also brought new technical changes to the Helium network, such as the addition of smart contract functionality and the adoption of the SPL standard. Furthermore, IOT has become the token for mining incentives and governance within the network.
