[HN Gopher] Helium
___________________________________________________________________
Helium
Author : Liron
Score : 126 points
Date : 2022-08-05 15:56 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.dshr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.dshr.org)
| _tom_ wrote:
| Can we not get decent titles on things? At least enough to know
| whether a post is about an element, a crypto tool, software for
| amazon, etc.
|
| And maybe a hint of what about helium people the post addresses?
| jshprentz wrote:
| Andreas Spiess, "the guy with the Swiss accent," analyzed the
| Helium network in May 2021 for his YouTube channel about
| electronics and micro-controllers. His video [1] provided a
| technical description and also analyzed the Helium business case.
| Spoiler alert: he concluded that the business case for hotspot
| owners was comparable to a Ponzi scheme.
|
| At the time of his analysis, the Helium network had about 39,000
| hotspots with about 32.5 million data credits spent in 30 days by
| network customers for data transport. At the fixed price of
| $0.00001 per data credit, that customers spent a total of $325.
| On average, each hotspot earned a little over 8/10 of a cent from
| data traffic during those 30 days.
|
| In the 14 months since that analysis, Helium signed up many more
| data customers and grew the network to almost 920,000 hotspots.
| Customers spent about 187 billion data credits in the past 30
| days at a total cost of $1.87 million. On average, each hotspot
| earned about $2 from data traffic during the past 30 days.
|
| Hotspot owners also earn rewards from proof of coverage activity:
| sending beacon messages and witnessing those messages from other
| hotspots. Proof of coverage rewards were very lucrative during
| Helium's first year, but diminished rapidly as more hotspots
| shared proof of coverage pie. Those rewards also diminished in
| urban and suburban areas as people deployed other hotspots
| nearby.
|
| The Helium Explorer [2] lets hotspot owners find locations where
| proof of coverage earnings remain high. These locations are in
| smaller communities and on the periphery of overdeveloped
| metropolitan hotspot clusters.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/nerQCrOam5U [2] https://explorer.helium.com/
| erulabs wrote:
| Well, no ill will to the Helium people - it seems like a somewhat
| smart idea. I wouldn't call it a "Web3" use-case though - as many
| have mentioned - they could have done their own payment
| processing and it wouldn't change the underlying product much
| (except possibly in the excitement of customers / would-be
| hotspot hosters).
|
| I guess my ill will here is with VC firms. Helium has raised
| 364.8M. With $6,500 revenue? I've talked to about a dozen folks
| like me, doing small, on-the-cusp-of-success startups, doing 3 to
| 5x that revenue with nowhere near the exposure as Helium, who get
| essentially laughed out of the room when trying to raise 500K.
|
| I have a _very_ hard time buying that the founders are ~600x
| better at fund raising than others, or that the idea even
| requires that much capital to prove out. Could they have not
| started with say, one neighborhood in SF, proved the idea, and
| raised from there?
|
| The only conclusion is that the author of this piece is right -
| it's a scam to dump the hyped coin onto retail investors. If it
| ever comes out that A16Z did in fact sell at peak and profited
| massively from this, I cannot help but feel it is existentially
| damning for the concept of silicon valley. I say that as a lowly
| but devoted tech acolyte.
|
| Well, at any rate, my response of being a bit annoyed at "what's
| your path to 100B" type questions from VCs will now change to
| "What makes you a capitalist and not a racketeer?".
| Clent wrote:
| This isn't for IoT home devices. This is a network for specific
| business segments, municipalities and researchers.
|
| The coins are just to convince people to buy the equipment and
| spread it out. Filling in the grid is more profitable than
| adding multiple nodes to the same segment. This causes a sort
| of mlm scheme where those who are 'in the know' are convincing
| family and friends to install these devices for a share of the
| profit.
| TheDudeMan wrote:
| They could have paid them in dollars.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| How is it any different than any other startup compensating
| its employees or vendors with equity instead of cash?
| Generally it makes sense for an early stage company to
| convince its partners to take equity or equity like
| instruments instead of cash. This is preferable for a
| number of reasons including:
|
| * Early partners are probably optimistic on the project
| (and hence why they're partners), and therefore _want_ to
| participate in the upside.
|
| * It aligns incentives, where early partners are heavily
| invested in the success of the project.
|
| * It removes the cost, distraction and uncertainty of
| having to raise more cash to pay early partners by selling
| the equity to outside investors.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| > How is it any different than any other startup
| compensating its employees or vendors with equity instead
| of cash?
|
| It avoids securities regulations around disclosure,
| insider trading, etc.
| frozenport wrote:
| >> damning for the concept of silicon valley
|
| Little too far. I work in the valley, raised a series B, and
| haven't heard of Helium. Strongly suspect the space is just
| poisoned.
| wmf wrote:
| _Could they have not started with say, one neighborhood in SF,
| proved the idea, and raised from there?_
|
| No, they probably couldn't have. Nobody will build IoT devices
| for a network that exists in one neighborhood so they built a
| global network and now they're hoping that devices start
| appearing. Besides, this kind of "go big or go home" play is
| exactly what VCs were asking for. I'm still highly skeptical of
| Helium but there is a certain logic to it.
| erulabs wrote:
| They didn't invent a new protocol or wireless standard.
| They're hosting a LoRaWAN and charging folks to use it.
| Presumably, Lime, for example, didn't actually need to change
| any hardware at all to use their service - their scooters
| already operate the proper hardware - they just bought
| LoRaWAN service from Helium instead of from say, Verizon. So
| I see no reason why it couldn't have been proven in a single
| city at the least.
| tromp wrote:
| Check the article; Lime is not using Helium at all (apart
| from some early unsuccessful experiment).
| [deleted]
| davidgerard wrote:
| so, that's another reason to assume ill will of Helium -
| they never had a deal with Lime. Helium was just lying.
| davidgerard wrote:
| I think there's plenty of ill will warranted for the Helium
| people - their business is scamming people with an investment
| scheme based around buying expensive node devices.
| joewadcan wrote:
| Nova Labs makes no money when people buy hotspots.
| DenseComet wrote:
| You and others have said this multiple times in this
| thread. Is this documented somewhere on their website? It's
| hard to just take your word for it looking at the prices.
| babyshake wrote:
| The biggest problem with A16Z dumping at the top while using
| the "we're so early" lines to get exit liquidity is that they
| are a seed/growth fund, not a hedge fund. It just ruins their
| credibility when talking about web3/crypto. If a hedge fund
| does this sort of thing, they're just trying to maximize
| profit, which isn't especially bad if they're not
| simultaneously telling retail investors that they are getting
| in on the ground floor. Edit: not saying A16Z is dumping on
| retail, just that it looks really bad for them _if_ they are.
| joewadcan wrote:
| Revenue is a bad predictor of future value for a network effect
| business (here a literal network). VC is supposed to seek high
| risk / high reward investments over 5+ year periods -
| especially ones that have a self-reinforcing moat like a
| physically distributed network.
| erulabs wrote:
| I understand what the logic is - I'm only suggesting that
| there is a gross disconnect between the capital available to
| grow small but profitable businesses and the capital
| available to gamble on a high-risk / high-reward situations
| where the "reward" is a share of a quasi-monopoly that more
| or less executed a hostile market takeover. That isn't so
| much capital allocation as something else entirely.
| delabay wrote:
| Sounds like your issue is with capitalism and not helium
| dcolkitt wrote:
| There's plenty of capital to grow small but profitable
| businesses. But it generally comes from in the form of a
| small business loan from a regional bank. Venture capital
| is explicitly a model seeking homeruns not singles.
|
| Being mad at a16z for not investing in your online t-shirt
| business makes about as much sense as being mad at Warren
| Buffet for not investing in complex interest rate
| derivatives.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > With $6,500 revenue? I've talked to about a dozen folks like
| me, doing small, on-the-cusp-of-success startups, doing 3 to 5x
| that revenue with nowhere near the exposure as Helium, who get
| essentially laughed out of the room when trying to raise 500K.
|
| Try 20 billion dollars lost over 10 years... and still getting
| investor money (Uber; Lyft will soon be on par).
|
| There's a magic combination of no morals, a product and rampant
| speculation that investors flock to.
| duskwuff wrote:
| You're mixing up revenue (the amount of money coming in) and
| profit (what's left over after costs).
|
| Helium doesn't have $6500/mo profit -- their profit is, in
| all probability, deeply negative. They have $6500/mo
| _revenue_.
| dmitriid wrote:
| So they are in a good company then :)
| keepquestioning wrote:
| Is LoRa compatible with IEEE Wi-Fi HaLow?
| Rackedup wrote:
| LoRa is a closed protocol... probably not
| wmf wrote:
| No, they're different protocols.
| rco8786 wrote:
| > A major reason that cryptocurrencies have become such a problem
| is that mainstream journalists
|
| Stopped reading exactly here. It's also the first sentence.
| davidgerard wrote:
| A refusal to do the reading, especially when forming opinions
| on something, is a chronic problem amongst crypto promoters,
| yes.
| lxe wrote:
| I have disconnected my gateway, as it's been wasting bandwidth
| downloading the blockchain all the time due to some bug. At its
| peak, I was generating about $100 a month, which was nice. Should
| have sold a while ago, but now I'm just holding the almost-
| worthless tokens, just like everything else in crypto winter.
| digdugdirk wrote:
| Whoof. A pretty damning overview of one of the few intriguing
| "Web3" use cases.
|
| I've always thought blockchain subsidized mesh networks were a
| great idea - people provide access via a router, and are
| reimbursed based on how many other people access the network via
| their node. Seems ideal, and could quickly and easily scale
| across an urban area.
|
| Is there some inherent limitation in the underlying technology
| that prevents this type of distributed system?
| amluto wrote:
| Yes, two of them.
|
| First, RF bandwidth is a shared resource. One may credibly
| complain about the FCC's allocation of bandwidth, but the big
| cellular networks work well because they are centrally managed.
| If every tall building had ten antennas operated by competing
| token miners, then they would probably have incentives to
| deliberate interfere with each other, and they would have
| little incentive to cooperate. The overall results would be
| much worse than what we have today.
|
| 2. Decentralized blockchains are inefficient. Helium would work
| every bit as well as it does today (hah) if the payments were
| centrally managed. Of course, it would be more to regulators
| and law enforcement, which might be a good thing.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| I don't think the primary issues are technical (LoRA is
| packet-based, so there'd need to more than 10 antennas near
| each other to cause headaches), they're financial. Even if we
| grant the basic premise that it would be useful to have LoRA
| coverage all over the place, the operator of the network
| needs to actually have customers who will pay to use it, and
| pay enough to cover then paying the people hosting nodes. I
| think you're right that Helium's blockchain/crypto angle is
| more about avoiding oversight / taxes / liability than it is
| any sort of fundamental requirement of getting lots of people
| to sign up to join building out coverage.
| jonathan-adly wrote:
| No - it is a great idea and will eventually work. A massive
| demand for this service doesn't really exist yet - so Helium is
| struggling. IOT devices everywhere are not here yet.
|
| But I don't see anything wrong with the underlying technology
| and the subsidy model. The only hiccup is the expected legal
| fight from big telco!
| rcoder wrote:
| I'm working on a different LoRa-related startup, and I can
| say with pretty high confidence that most people hear "mesh
| network" and jump directly to, "so I can check Facebook from
| anywhere?" (Replace Facebook with Slack, Zoom, YouTube, or
| any other bandwidth-hungry, "use it all day" app you can
| think of.)
|
| And yet, the theoretical (not even real-world) bandwidth for
| LoRa is in the hundreds of bytes per second; perhaps whole
| _kilobytes_ if you're giving up most of the range and power
| savings that LoRa offers for traditional IoT.
|
| On the "small devices exchanging small amounts of data"
| front, LoRa, particularly for large-scale deployments like
| the ones Helium resells access to, faces a lot of competition
| from Thread, Matter, and other "home-scale" mesh options.
| Until Apple or Samsung puts a LoRa radio in their handsets,
| it's going to be a niche product. (Unlikely because Semtech
| owns all the patents on LoRa. One of them might _buy_
| Semtech, but I imagine they'd shell out $2 per handset
| approximately _never_.)
| digdugdirk wrote:
| Do you have any good starting points for reading up on the
| differences between LoRa and traditional WiFi? Both
| technical and practical.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| > Is there some inherent limitation in the underlying
| technology that prevents this type of distributed system?
|
| The ToS of the ISP you plugged your "web3 router" into prevent
| you from reselling your bandwidth.
| wmf wrote:
| Since Internet access has converged on an unlimited usage
| pricing model this will end up like Spotify: customers pay a
| flat rate which gets sliced extremely thin and providers get
| paid very little.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| I'm not sure it's correct to say that internet access has
| "converged" on unlimited usage. Most cellular plans have data
| caps (even "unlimited" plans have caps that they throttle
| after) and even hardwired internet plans are starting to have
| data caps by default now.
| munificent wrote:
| As I understand it, the idea is that people are essentially
| subletting the bandwidth they pay for from their ISP.
|
| ISPs famously overprovision users. While your ISP plan may
| nominally guarantee some level of bandwidth, the network
| physically can't support all users using that much bandwidth at
| the same time.
|
| It's like gyms where if everyone who had a membership actually
| showed up, there wouldn't be enough gear to go around. The
| gym's business model completely relies on the fact that most
| members don't use the maximum of what their plan allows.
|
| ISPs don't want you subletting their bandwidth because that
| makes it easier to consume all of what your plan allows. They
| absolutely can't handle a signficant fraction of their users
| doing that.
|
| So, if a subsidized mesh network were to ever become popular
| enough to be a viable business, ISPs would simply forbid users
| from participating in it.
|
| It's just a fundamentally broken business model. It would be
| like sharing a gym membership across multiple people. Makes
| perfect sense for the member. "Hey, I only go one day a week
| anyway, so I can let 6 other people share it on the other
| days!" But the gym itself straight up could not sustain that at
| their current membership prices. Their only options are:
|
| 1. Forbid it (which is what they already do, since membership
| is associated with a specific person).
|
| 2. Go out of business.
|
| 3. Jack up membership prices until they can sustain all members
| fully utilizing their membership. But that would drive away
| members who _didn 't_ share memberships and make it so that
| your fraction of a shared membership is about as expensive as a
| single one used to be.
|
| Fundamentally, you can't pull infrastructure out of thin air.
| Pretending you can be reselling it won't work.
| digdugdirk wrote:
| What about a separate mesh network? i.e.- not connected to
| the global internet through an ISP.
|
| I could see there being value to a fully independent
| "intranet" local to a geographic region.
| ahepp wrote:
| You could also provide less (but fully available) bandwidth
| at the same price. Offer the current 1gbps plan at a much
| higher rate.
|
| Or more realistically you could introduce plans with data
| caps, or "burst modes".
|
| I think there are a lot of knobs here.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Sharing a portion of my 300Mbps down/20 Mbps up bandwidth for
| a LoRaWAN network that passes dozens to low hundreds of bps
| per device is like fretting over people breathing the air in
| the gym parking lot.
| munificent wrote:
| If the device is only passing a few hundred bits per
| second, that also implies that it is doing almost nothing
| of value as well.
|
| Here's maybe another way to think about it: What possible
| viable business model is there for consumer ISP customers
| to build an ad hoc wireless network on top of the ISP's
| infrastructure that wouldn't immediately get killed by ISPs
| entirely reasonably cutting out the middle man?
| sokoloff wrote:
| The step from connectivity of 0 bps to 100 bps is
| massive. Plenty of sensor apps need a few hundred bytes
| per day to create value.
| nradov wrote:
| Regardless of the payment model, construction of reliable,
| large scale wireless mesh networks remains an unsolved problem.
| Scaling those is not easy due to nodes going up and down,
| terminal devices moving around, intermittent RF interference,
| etc. The One Laptop Per Child project famously tried to use
| such a network in order to extend Internet access into areas
| lacking communications infrastructure, but it never really
| worked. This remains an area of active research and I'm
| skeptical whether the field has matured enough for
| commercialization.
| macrolime wrote:
| It's not surprising that the revenue is that low. LoRa consumer
| devices are almost nonexistent at the moment and office buildings
| etc who use LoRa devices have their own hotspots on site.
|
| Since there are now tons of Helium hotspots everywhere, maybe
| that could be open up the market for more consumer LoRa devices?
| Not seeing much of it yet though, but who knows.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| That's the bit I don't get: how is so little of the money
| raised going into its own product?
|
| $6.5k/month is embarrassing.
|
| Personally I looked into using their tech for a semi-remote
| cabin where I didn't want to pay for extortionist telecom rates
| just to turn something on/off remotely, and couldn't find a
| good way to do it with Helium.
|
| I would have thought there would be an off-the-shelf thing, but
| nope.
| [deleted]
| duskwuff wrote:
| If you have cell coverage, you may want to take a look at
| https://www.particle.io/. Device availability is somewhat
| limited, but the service is cheap enough ($3/device/mo I
| think?) and their tools are pretty good.
| eikaramba wrote:
| I am currently building a end consumer device using LORAWAN. It
| sends you a push notification upon receiving mail in your
| mailbox. It also uses helium, because the network coverage is
| quite good. https://notific.at - i think end user use cases are
| the key to make the business model behind Helium work. The fact
| that helium was able to scale within 1 year what TTN had to do in
| 8 years is quite the proof for me that paying gateway owners some
| kind of revenue is the way to scale the network coverage.
| delabay wrote:
| The beauty of helium is that it didn't exist, then two years
| later, it exists everywhere, covering most of the western
| world. People don't "agree" with how it got there: guess what,
| all other attempts to do the same have utterly failed.
|
| The data is so cheap that it enables fantastic new applications
| like yours. Don't stop building. There are many people (not on
| HN) cheering for you.
| wmf wrote:
| The ends don't justify the scamming.
| vageli wrote:
| It seems you could sell the mailbox device and the gateway
| together if cost permitted (I know you say "No base station
| required" but some users may not mind running a basestation,
| especially if it required little/no configuration).
| delabay wrote:
| Too much friction. Reminds me of the classic HN refrain: why
| use Netflix when I could just setup a RAID storage server and
| my own linux-based media platform?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Except they used crypto to mask the fact that the positive ROI
| of ownership is at best years out rather than months out.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| That's the whole point of crypto tokenomics. You use the
| token to incentivize capital expenditure on the speculation
| that demand will come. The entire point of a token is to
| align incentives around this. It has worked for Bitcoin and
| Ethereum. It has worked for many other protocols (Sushi,
| Aave, Chainlink, Filecoin, Arweave, etc). It has also failed
| for some protocols.
| nradov wrote:
| Actually it hasn't worked anywhere except to incentivize
| capital expenditure on mining hardware which does nothing
| of value beyond wasting electricity. All of those protocols
| you listed are scams or pointless failures.
| orril wrote:
| You really think the first, ever, widely used public key
| databases are useless? You don't believe cryptography has
| any usecase? Or you misunderstand why a blockchain is
| novel? Two possibilities.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| I read your comment, and started to draft a reply, but I
| went back through it, I don't actually think you
| understand the words you're using, so it's kinda
| pointless.
| nradov wrote:
| We have had widely used public key infrastructure
| available in database products since the 1980s. Perhaps
| you weren't paying attention?
|
| Cryptography obviously has use cases. Real customers have
| been paying for it since long before the advent of
| digital computers. That has little to do with the
| scammers, grifters, and ideologues pushing cryptocurrency
| schemes.
|
| There's not much novel about blockchains. It's a clever
| bit of mathematics, but so far no significant commercial
| value. You should read the NIST overview.
|
| https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/nistir/8202/fin
| al
| shimonabi wrote:
| My biggest disappoinment is with NPR. They were shilling Helium
| on their recent podcast. Anderssen Horowitz was even cited as a
| source in their story.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2022/07/22/1113115868/little-house-on-th...
| pstuart wrote:
| NPR disappoints me on a regular basis but it's still valuable
| to have in the news ecosystem.
|
| I saw the Helium ad on YouTube a couple years ago and was
| instantly enamored (yay decentralization) but upon actually
| checking out the details it became clear it was Yet Another
| Crypto Scam.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx9YyS7-d3g
| yuan43 wrote:
| From the Helium home page:
|
| > Using a Burn-and-Mint Equilibrium token model, The People's
| Network utilizes two units of exchange: HNT and Data Credits.
|
| Here's a simple heuristic to separate "crypto" wheat from chaff:
| is a "utility token" involved? If yes, you are probably looking
| at a scam. If not, scam is less likely.
|
| Here Helium gives off a strong aroma of eau-du-scam in that not
| just one but _two_ tokens are involved.
|
| Wait, there's more. A few hops through the home page leads to a
| GitHub repo with the following:
|
| > In order to join the blockchain, every hotspot requires an
| onboarding code. This code is validated by a staking server and
| used to onboard a hotspot and pay the $40 staking fee. Currently,
| these codes are exclusively issued by Helium Inc and validated by
| their staking server at <staking.helium.foundation>.
|
| https://github.com/helium/HIP/blob/main/0019-third-party-man...
|
| So not only are there tokens, but there's a non-refundable fee to
| get going.
|
| Maybe it's possible to run one of these projects without it
| turning into a MLM scam. But given enough time, even the ones
| with the best intentions seem to arrive at that destination.
| joewadcan wrote:
| I think you're misreading. HNT was the original token and was a
| new chain. Data credits are just how the outside world burns
| those credits at a fixed price, so that they don't need to know
| about crypto. Not a token.
|
| And Nova Labs doesn't get any of that onboarding money. That is
| burned by the network.
| Archelaos wrote:
| > He conveniently ignores that conflict of interest policies
| prevent journalists owning cryptocurrencies, not experiencing
| them using the paper's money.
|
| To see a a conflict of interest here is like saying that you must
| not write about the US-Dollar as a journalist as long as you have
| some. Perhaps it is a conflict of interest if you own a lot of it
| and do not disclose the fact -- but any? Is this really the case?
| cmiles74 wrote:
| I believe the conflict of interest is not simply that the
| author reported on a company they had invested in. In my
| opinion, the conflict lies in the fact that they then wrote
| pieces, in their role as a journalist, that pretty much were
| free advertising and encouraged other people to also invest in
| this company. The fact that these pieces appear to be poorly
| researched is like icing on the cake.
|
| Because they benefit from people investing in this company,
| isn't that a clear conflict of interest?
| Ensorceled wrote:
| > To see a a conflict of interest here is like saying that you
| must not write about the US-Dollar as a journalist as long as
| you have some.
|
| No, it's like having AT&T stock and writing about AT&T. As much
| as web3 fans WANT crypto "currency" to be a currency, it is
| still, at best, a volatile, high risk investment vehicle.
| asah wrote:
| FYI a sizable percentage of America owns some amount of
| crypto - depending on the study, anywhere from 8%-20% -
| that's more than $100 bills in wallets, which is ~5% of
| Americans. Only if you include ETFs and mutual funds can you
| claim this about AT&T stock.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=percent+america+owns+crypto
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=percentage+americans+have+10.
| ..
| Ensorceled wrote:
| I'm not sure what your point is. Journalists can hold
| mutual funds and ETFs without being in conflict of
| interest.
|
| Since a journalist writing about crypto currency can have
| direct impact on that coin's value, they are ethically
| bound to not write about coins the hold. Just like direct
| holdings of stock.
| Archelaos wrote:
| The legal classification in the EU should be interesting
| here. The directive 2018/843/EU defines "virtual currencies"
| and classifies them as "means of exchange" (in contrast to
| "fiat currencies" and "legal tender"):
| "virtual currencies" means a digital representation of value
| that is not issued or guaranteed by a central bank or a
| public authority, is not necessarily attached to a legally
| established currency and does not possess a legal status of
| currency or money, but is accepted by natural or legal
| persons as a means of exchange and which can be transferred,
| stored and traded electronically;
|
| Source: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
| content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
| davidgerard wrote:
| no, that's an inane comparison, and one I've only ever heard
| crypto pumpers making.
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| Helium is basically Herbalife marketed to crypto bros. There is
| no reason these hotspots cost $500 dollars or more. It's a simple
| Lora access point and should sell somewhere around a $100 (or
| less, considering how many are sold). Just like MLMs: People
| believe they are a partner and will profit along with Helium. In
| reality they are the end customer. Nova Labs makes money from
| onboarding people's hot spots and that's it. Every other revenue
| is a rounding error.
| delabay wrote:
| Nova makes no money in the sale of hotspots.
| joewadcan wrote:
| Nova Labs makes no money from onboarding hotspots. That goes to
| the Helium network. You're just counting network billings as
| Nova Labs, when they are two separate entities.
|
| I think Nova did the right thing by getting out of the
| manufacturing business, so that those hotspots can go sub $100.
| [deleted]
| idkyall wrote:
| I think I'm most bothered by Helium lying about their corporate
| users. There is no longer a question in my mind that we need
| better government protections for consumers in the crypto space.
| Whether we ascribe their false marketing to negligence or
| outright malice, companies like Helium and their investors should
| be held responsible for exploiting consumers.
|
| I purchased a Helium hotspot last year and was drawn in by what
| seemed like a real use case for a decentralized system - it made
| sense to me as far as what value was being provided by miners
| compared to other PoW cryptocurrencies. I was disappointed by the
| rewards being somewhat low, but I chalked it up to bad timing.
|
| A few months later, the helium network proposed a change which
| would take a % of rewards away from hotspot operators and gave it
| to large holders of the token who have staked it(validators).
| Sure, this change was 'voted' on - but having more HNT tokens
| gives you more votes. If large capital holders(at least 50% of
| the supply seems to be held by the top ~25-30 wallets per
| https://explorer.helium.com/accounts/richest) can outvote those
| actually providing utility(hotspot owners), then it doesn't
| really strike me as a particularly fair and decentralized system.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| You ran towards an unregulated market - literally because it
| was unregulated, these promises couldn't be made by a regulated
| entity, and now you're unhappy because you feel screwed. That's
| literally why the regulations exist, but you have to accept
| that you aren't just going to get "free money" offers in real
| markets. You're going to get them in unregulated markets, and
| they're going to be lies.
| xtremew0lf99 wrote:
| Is Helium's New '5G Network' Just Hot Air?
| https://www.pcmag.com/news/is-heliums-new-5g-network-just-ho...
| joewadcan wrote:
| This was pretty disappointing. To see FreedomFi not own up to
| the fact that 4g vs 5g is misleading... with their excuse that
| everyone else is doing it.
| superchroma wrote:
| I wouldn't have spent so long talking about $HNT spot price, as
| it erodes the impact of the article. There are companies doing
| good work with share prices that aren't pumping, too. Helium is a
| scam regardless.
|
| I've read additional criticism where bad actors in China operate
| fake nodes which report as being in the middle of the ocean;
| using the network browser tool you can see arrays of nodes there.
| This is far more alarming to me as it indicates that the security
| model isn't real and the network is compromised.
| wmf wrote:
| AFAIK they "fixed" the fake node problem by preventing people
| from building their own; now you have to buy them from Helium.
| Arguably this is semi-centralized but no one really cares.
| delabay wrote:
| There are 30+ vendors of helium compatible hardware. Nothing
| is purchased "from helium".
| wmf wrote:
| AFAIK those vendors are officially licensed.
| delabay wrote:
| by a third party who gets paid about $5000 to validate
| the hardware/firmware/business entity of aforementioned
| HW manufacturer.
|
| It's not shady, as others would have you think.
| bArray wrote:
| I follow a Facebook page for Helium miners in the UK, because a
| family member was interested in getting involved and I said I
| would check it out first. I recommended against it (as I do with
| all crypto 'investments').
|
| I observed it going "well", with people boasting massive return
| on investment. I then saw their profits drop, with software
| updates and faulty equipment being blamed. As a result, people
| went out and purchased new and more expensive equipment, many
| buying ludicrously expensive support equipment to improve signal
| properties. After quite some time of this, I then saw their
| revenue drop even more so.
|
| Many of these people are invested several thousand pounds
| (multiple miners, multiple types of miners and support
| equipment). I see fewer and fewer people post now, with many now
| accepting their loss.
|
| There is a real cost here, and as per usual, it is the people
| least able to afford it that pay it.
| haasted wrote:
| > Roose could have rapidly found enough information to cast doubt
| on Helium's sustainability.
|
| Couldn't a similar accusation be levied against a lot of other
| hyper-growth startups, eg Uber? They were heavily subsidizing
| rides to grow and might not actually have a workable model if the
| subsidies are removed.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > Couldn't a similar accusation be levied against a lot of
| other hyper-growth startups, eg Uber? They were heavily
| subsidizing rides to grow and might not actually have a
| workable model if the subsidies are removed.
|
| Yes. Yes it could, and it must. Uber lost over 20 _billion_
| dollars over 10 years. It 's not a business. It's a speculation
| and price dumping vehicle.
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| Words are too overloaded already. Time to invent new letters.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| Instead of reading about Helium that doesn't matter, you may want
| to read about helium that does matter.
|
| https://cen.acs.org/business/specialty-chemicals/Podcast-hel...
| DJBunnies wrote:
| I mean for one, not the same helium and for two, breeder
| reactors.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-08-05 23:01 UTC)