What Is Helium
The Helium Network is a long-range wireless gateway infrastructure managed and incentivized by the native cryptocurrency HNT. It's dynamic and versatile hardware, software, and blockchain solution to create a truly decentralized, distributed, global WiFi network to manage and power the Internet of Things (IoT).
Users buy HNT to use the network, and investors also buy the utility tokens as speculative investments on the potential future value of the network as reflected in the Helium price, or to buy and sell with market timing to capitalize on short term market failures to price the coin accurately.
HNT coin enjoys a market capitalization of over a billion dollars at the time of publication. The network provides wireless service for connected devices, especially small, specialized, connected devices that send and receive small data packets for network coordination (think smart homes and offices). Users can also analyze site traffic and personalize content using the network.
Helium Founders
A long range project, Helium is a company that was founded in 2013 by co-founders Amir Haleem, Shawn Fanning, and Sean Carey.
Fanning is well known for developing Napster with co-founder Sean Parker. Napster was one of the earliest successfully mass-deployed peer-to-peer (P2p) file sharing networks, and became famous in the early 2000s for enabling users to share music.
Haleem's background is in eSports and game development, while Carey has worked in software for multiple companies before starting Helium with the other founders.
Helium today hires with a focus on "radio and hardware, manufacturing, distributed systems, peer-to-peer and blockchain technologies."
How Does HNT Work
Helium developed an innovative solution to use blockchain technology as a wireless network router to create a distributed wireless gateway network. It is designed to function as a decentralized wireless provider with global network coverage.
The blockchain protocol manages the network with the collaboration of network participants using HNT coin. The blockchain verifies who owns a packet, the information contained in the packets, and validates requests to send them to other hotspots. All of this with no need for a centralized intermediary in the form of a central server running routing tables.
With the introduction of its Tabs product in 2020 (for $49 for Helium hotspot owners), the company premiered Helium tags, allowing network users to track their tags and historical location data from the convenience of a native, integrated smartphone app.
The company may serve targeted advertisements to market these products. Investors also speculate on the HNT price. Though this should not be construed as financial advice, Helium price is the market's best current guess about supply and demand economics around the coin and its network.
Demand boosting determinants (features, marketing, network effects) increase the HNT price. Demand faltering determinants (market corrections to bubbles) decrease the Helium price. Some investors buy and sell HNT to trade against its market price.
Helium Security
HNT security is maintained by protocol to make the network trustless and decentralized, without the need to trust or know third parties using the blockchain.
Helium's consensus mechanism is proof-of-coverage (PoC). It rewards users for validating transactions and maintaining the network as nodes. PoC is based on HoneyBadger BFT protocol, designed to be resilient against unstable conditions.
The decentralized nature of Helium blockchain security is part of the company's ethos of building the "people's network" for wifi coverage and enable a flourishing, distributed, global Internet of Things.
The biggest concern for developers on the Helium blockchain is inbound ports of Helium hotspots used as an attack vector by hackers. That goes for network users, and Helium protocols are designed to be secure against these kinds of attacks using the proof-of-coverage protocol to achieve blockchain consensus. As for holders of HNT tokens, private key security is supported by asymmetric keys on the platform's native wallet.
