The planned migration of Helium from its layer-1 blockchain platform to Solana has been accomplished. The creators and backers of Helium believe that Solana has the potential to open up new use cases for the network, which may be made possible by a large-scale NFT mint associated with the migration.
Starting on Thursday, the switch from Helium’s internal blockchain to Solana took place over a single day. The community could have a lot more resources to operate its wireless networks thanks to the migration to Solana, which was announced last year.
In 2013, Helium was established to provide a global decentralized wireless network using a proprietary Hotspot device. Helium unveiled its blockchain in 2019 to promote the use of the growth of its wireless network. Helium’s original focus was on IoT and smart devices.
The concept is that anybody should be able to purchase a hotspot device, put it in their house or place of business, and then offer coverage for nearby smart devices.
According to Sigel, the majority of the community shouldn’t experience any changes after the switch to Solana besides an improved Helium network. The LoRaWAN hotspots that now mine the native coin, HNT, will switch to mining IOT.
Each actual hotspot node operating on the Helium network is represented by an NFT as part of the migration procedure, totaling around 991,000 Solana NFTs in the end. Owners of hotspots can still move or alter the locations of their hotspots as they see fit and will be able to collect their corresponding NFT when they log into the wallet associated with the hotspot.
As of Wednesday morning, public blockchain data gathered on the analytics portal Flipside Crypto showed that more than 150,00 of the NFTs had been issued. Although there is a minor delay in the data on the platform, the process seems to be progressing.
It serves as the most visible test case to date for Solana’s new state compression feature, which enables creators to mint potentially enormous quantities of NFTs for comparatively low costs when compared to other platforms—or even to Solana’s standard NFT minting procedure.
Abhay Kumar began as a member of the community before being hired to assist in developing the blockchain architecture and products. Last year, he was appointed CEO of the foundation.
According to Kumar’s blog post from today, Helium has about 1 million hotspots installed and coverage in more than 77,000 towns and cities across 192 countries, making it the largest LoRaWAN network in the world.
In less than a year, the Helium 5G network, which employs unlicensed CBRS, has deployed more than 8,000 radios. As gateways, FreedomFi offers Helium 5G hotspots. FreedomFi was purchased by Nova Labs last year.
