Over 81% of token-based votes want Helium, the crypto-powered wireless network, to officially migrate to the Solana blockchain. As such, the Helium Foundation has announced a Q4 launch for the transition.
Amir Haleem, the Helium co-founder and Nova Labs CEO, is optimistic about hitting that target. The Nova Labs has already been working on the off-chain oracles to enable the new Solana-driven design. Haleem described the on-chain work as being quite a lot easier by comparison. This is another major move for the Helium network which had started with a decentralized wireless network for internet-of-things (IoT) devices like sensors and trackers. It rewards users with tokens for running nodes and sharing their connectivity.
Helium wants to do the same with a 5G network for smartphones and announced “Helium Mobile” – an upcoming phone service that uses Helium 5G network and T-Mobile’s nationwide 5G network. However, Helium needs to change the infrastructure in order to scale those networks and accommodate other wireless protocols in the future. Haleem said that when the company started building the network back in 2017, the developers didn’t believe that Ethereum could handle a distributed wireless network at scale. The founders built their own layer-1 blockchain network as the options at that time were limited.
Haleem shared that it caused issues. He outlined that everything is very deeply intertwined in the current model, including Helium’s proof-of-coverage and data transfer elements. Haleem believes that trying to fix or change one thing can have unintentional consequences on other network pieces. He said everything is just like a big, monolithic block.
