Helium, a decentralised wireless network, has recently announced that it has officially migrated to the Solana blockchain. The announcement comes after over 6,000 community members voted in favour of the Helium Improvement Proposal (HIP) 70, which was made public on August 30th. The proposal confirmed the migration of Helium's Proof-of-Coverage algorithm and data transfer accounting to Oracles, with the aim of reducing reliance on internal blockchain operations and expanding its ecosystem on Solana.
By linking its own purpose-built Layer 1 blockchain to the Solana blockchain, Helium hopes to connect the world's largest decentralised wireless network with the fastest-growing crypto ecosystem. According to the proposal, the changes brought about by HIP 70 do not change the fundamentals of the Helium Network or HNT. Instead, it provides 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.
During the on-chain vote, which took place in the early hours of Thursday morning, 81.41% of the community members voted in favour of migration. To participate in the vote, participants staked the Helium token (HNT), and a two-thirds majority was required to vote to migrate the network to pass. By staking over 12 million HNTs, the majority of the community members voted in favour of the move. Only 1,270 members, or about 18%, voted against the proposal.
Following the announcement of the voting results, the Helium Foundation tweeted, "🚨It’s official! The HIP 70 vote has ended. #Helium will be moving to the @Solana blockchain!👏🏼"
The move to Solana advances the Helium ecosystem's mission of delivering secure, ubiquitous, and affordable connectivity through an innovative incentive model. It also integrates seamlessly with Solana's existing ecosystem of consumer-focused applications, such as Metaplex, Serum, Phantom, Raydium, Orca, Audius, and others.
Scott Sigel, the chief operating officer of the Helium Foundation, stated in a public statement, "We have an ambitious mission of deploying and managing wireless networks at scale, and moving to Solana allows us to do that. Solana has a proven track record powering some of the world’s most important decentralised initiatives, and they were an obvious choice for us to partner with. Moving to the Solana blockchain allows us to focus our efforts on scaling the network as opposed to managing the blockchain itself.”
The Helium Foundation has stated that the transition will begin in Q4 of this year. During the migration, Helium will also provide validators with a staking bonus, with validators earning three times as much HNT during the first seven days of the transition. Investors are also expected to benefit from the migration, including the addition of two million HNT tokens to reward pools each year. There will be more rewards for Helium hotspot owners, consistent mining, and data transfer reliability improvements.
