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Comment by wyager | Hacker News Reader

I can’t take helium seriously because it’s an ICO scheme wrapped in a thinly plausible veneer of being about peer-to-peer communication.

If you come up with a peer-to-peer network technology, and you want people to take it seriously, don’t try to make a quick buck off it. If it needs payments for routing or whatever, just use an existing payment technology like lightning or something.

It would be hard to sound more like a hype scam if they tried: “Powered by the Helium Blockchain, The People’s Network represents a paradigm shift for decentralized wireless infrastructure.”

Edit: against my better judgment I read some of the technical stuff on their site. This is either decentralized in name only or vulnerable to Sybil attacks.

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> This is either decentralized in name only or vulnerable to Sybil attacks.

The Helium network does a variety of things to mitigate sybil attacks by requiring/incentivizing geographic distance between the routers.

There are other proof-of-coverage systems where all of your criticisms would apply, such as MXC (the hotspot version, not the exchange) as they do allow individuals to just hoard a bunch of hotspots in one place and try to earn, reducing the health of the network. You should reserve your judgements for the ones doing it wrong and compare it to the ones doing it right or at least differently.

It sounds like the thing they actually do is have a centralized architecture with one entity issuing miner private keys for $40 each. It’s DINO (decentralized in name only)

so the point of decentralization pushes is for the censorship resistance. if helium organization went away today, there would still be 192,000 nodes that still get to function and perpetuate the network.

so basically, nobody cares about that particular area of centralization and it allows for vetted hardware that meets some additional standards to come onto the network (at one point they didn't gatekeep and allowed any hardware).

I think this role can go away though.

> so basically, nobody cares about that particular area of centralization

except for anyone who cares about cryptosystems actually being cryptographically secure and decentralized instead of just serving as a thin excuse to drive hype.

> I think this role can go away though.

The eternal refrain of shitcoins is “I think we can fix this later”. That never seems to end up being correct.

There are hundreds of tokens and projects and burn their admin keys or otherwise remove centralization where greater decentralization was a goal

If it is a goal and a part of a threat surface, I care about it

If its not, I don’t care about it and it can exist as part of a gradient instead of being a line in the sand to complain about

Helium literally never did an ICO.

So funny watching bitter losers at hackernews get everything about blockchain wrong and stay poor over the past 10 years.

- Throw in some buzzwords you don't really understand like "lightning" (does not apply to helium as it is a protocol based on bitcoin script)

- use the word "scam" because you don't own any and you didn't invest a few months ago when it was pennies.

- sprinkle in some unfounded FUD about decentralization and Sybil attacks because you're bitter you still don't own any

Helium is the fastest growing wireless network on the planet.

There are currently 190,000 hotspots over the globe, up from 20,000 6-months ago. https://explorer.helium.com/

...but but but against your better judgement you read some of the technical stuff... wooooowwwww

Call me when the Helium node count drops below 100,000 again and I'll congratulate you and thank you for warning everyone about this "scam" before it was too late.

One scam here is that there will likely be ubiquitous sensors in your tv, door bell, car, fridge, heater and they won't be reporting back to you. They'll be telling the sellers of these devices about your activities, and it will be sold just like connected tvs today sell info about what you watch.

All these devices must be FCC certified so if you don't like the products, dont buy them.

There are already thousands of societal beneficial uses of lorawan.

Like what?

No one wanted tvs to spy on them via the internet connections, they just wanted connected tvs with built in streaming devices. Today for any privacy you have to buy your own streaming device and not connect your tv itself to the internet. In the very near future, most devices will come with a low power radio that can't be turned off (just like you basically can't turn off the ubiquitous spying from your streaming connected tv). This network aids that.

> Helium literally never did an ICO.

They clearly have some sort of central issuance because they have an airdrop. Their “proof” mechanism is either centralized or Sybil vulnerable - haven’t bothered checking which.

> So funny watching bitter losers at hackernews get everything about blockchain wrong and stay poor over the past 10 years.

This is a hilariously off-the-mark shot. I have nothing against blockchain when used where it’s actually useful (I.e. for solving double-spend or zooko). This, however, seems like a silly misapplication.

> Throw in some buzzwords you don't really understand like "lightning"

I think you did not understand what I said, which is that payment for network services should use normal payment mechanisms instead of special ones.

> Silly misapplication

200k operators climbing their roof to deploy beneficial coverage beg to differ

Probably not many, if any, of them understand the technology at any level deep enough to comprehend why it’s a dumb idea. 200k people getting caught up in an altcoin scam is hardly new.

Yet helium solved Lorawan coverage in spite of it all :)

Helium fan here.

I think a deeper dive is warranted on what and how they are "paying" people. Helium tokens are used as an incentive to bootstrap a network, but in the future part of payment for network services like you mentioned. I think this is one of the purest uses of crypto... less as currency replacement but more sharing in a network's future.

The helium company charges miner manufacturing partners $40 a unit in order to generate the required private keys for their miners to be able to join the network.

As soon as I found out I couldn't stand up my own DIY helium miner and start providing coverage and making money I became entirely disinterested.

With DIY they couldn't insure the security of participants. The temptation is too hight to create 100s of cloud miners.

That said, there are 50 HW manufacturers queued up to supply. Incorporating Helium into an existing Lora framework is very easy.

In fact, Helium is seeing an interesting phenomena where the PoC mining tech is becoming bundled with existing HW platforms because the material costs are so cheap. Projects are now bootstrapping on top of Helium.

I think the issue is with the $40 fee. Why not $1, or $5?

Onboarding fees maintain a buy-side for the network token until true network utilization catches up. The original article is an example of network utilization literally catching up.

How did they arrive at $40 I'm not too sure. It seems like a moderate amount?

Then it sure sounds like what they have is a proof of private keys algo, and not a proof of coverage algo. In which case why bother with a blockchain at all if there's a singular central entity that is the arbiter of all trust?

this is probably the only valid criticism in this thread so far. But your statement is not entirely correct:

- An organization different from Helium Inc. disperses keys to hardware manufacturers.

- Said independent org also performs an audit and approval process.

- Improvements to the network are crowdsourced and voted by rough consensus.

- Anybody can make suggestions or implementations similar to ethereum improvement proposals.

- Once deployed, there is no way to remove the node from the network.

- Nobody has banning or revocation abilities.

At first glance it might seem like that but the hotspots are measuring signal from eachother and are rewarded accordingly. The Proof of Coverage comes from actual measurements of RSSI against distance and power variations.

This is one of more interesting parts of the Helium network. It's wholly not forkable. Helium hotspot owners get their firmware updated automatically... which again seems like a big negative (single company controlled hardware) but it's imperative for this stage of network bootstrapping. I want Helium to tightly control quality now to get to a level of resources where trust itself can be disaggregated amongst DIY hotspots and firmware developers.

> With DIY they couldn't insure the security of participants. The temptation is too hight to create 100s of cloud miners.

Indeed, that’s why helium is DINO (decentralized in name only).

the $40 is burned on-chain, it never comes to the company. it’s just a cheap form of spam control

spam control and token demand. crypto places a huge value on large public burns.

Please explain how one uses blockchain to solve a zooko.

> I have nothing against blockchain when used where it’s actually useful (I.e. for solving double-spend or zooko).

Namecoin

They don't need to do a traditional ICO to grift.

In order to join the network and start mining, you've got to buy $80 worth of gear from some company marked up to $600. That company then has to pay $40 to the Helium company in order for them to generate private keys that let your miner join the network and start making money.

Helium is just https://network.fon.com/ on a different frequency + a bunch of unneeded crypto bullshit that hides the grift.

Call me when I can stand up my helium miner based on open source hardware and software and make money using that.

If your goal is to build a global network with unheard of capital efficiency in 1/10th the time as incumbents, then the crypto bullshit is means to an end.

Helium will go down as one of quote unquote "actual uses for blockchain".

The proof is here. Lorawan coverage is now a solved problem.

They have already built the worlds largest contiguous Lorawan network (a spectrum and application woefully underserved in the united states), and the network grows at 40-50% monthly. Token distribution is inherently tied to providing provably useful coverage, and "miners" use as much electricity as an LED lightbulb.

This is probably the most socially useful, productive means of mining crypto conceived so far.

I've got a Mark 1 Helium IoT kit in the basement somewhere. You want it?

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