Helium Is Finally Moving From its Custom Blockchain to Solana

The community members of the Internet of Things (IoT) blockchain network, Helium, has voted for a complete transition to Solana to improve network scalability.

• The HIP 70 proposal published by the Helium Foundation has been in the works for several months.
• In August, the foundation detailed the reasons behind the core developers’ inclination to Solana from its own bespoke chain to ramp up Helium in terms of speed, stability, and ability to serve more users.
• The vote for the migration began on September 12. A majority of 81.41% voted in favor of the migration, while the rest, 18.59%, stood against it.
• The proposal states,

“The proposed changes in HIP 70 do not change the fundamentals of the Helium Network or HNT, but provide several benefits to the Helium Network including more HNT available to subDAO reward pools, more consistent mining, more reliable data transfer, more utility for HNT and subDAO tokens, and more ecosystem support.”

• After the completion of the migration, a new version of the Helium Wallet App will be unveiled.
• The history of the Helium Layer 1 blockchain will remain public, and users can access the new application by updating their current wallet app.
• The holders of the HNT token will also be able to use other wallets within the Solana ecosystem, including Phantom or Solflare.
• For the uninitiated, Helium is a Google-backed startup founded in 2019.
• It is essentially a distributed wireless network that offers users crypto tokens as rewards for sharing their home internet service with a broader community.
• So far, it has attracted over 952k active node operators, as per the latest data.