Hacker News Reader

It’s on their homepage (helium.com) with the following text:

‘’’ Powered by the Helium Blockchain, The People’s Network represents a paradigm shift for decentralized wireless infrastructure. ‘’’

They use the blockchain in combination with a proof of coverage algorithm to reward hotspots. https://docs.helium.com/blockchain/proof-of-coverage/

View on HN

Now that's an interesting idea. I'd wanted to have "proof of decentralization" - require that nodes be physically distant from each other, to prevent mining farms. But I couldn't figure out a way to prevent cheating. It's easy to fake that you are far away, but hard to fake that you're close, because the speed of light limits ping time.

But if you have something that's a useful network in its own right that keeps track of its own coverage, you can use that to enforce decentralization. The higher the density of nodes in an area, the lower the reward.

Helium network is also battling bad actors in the network and even though the have anti cheat measures in place they are currently voting on a deny list approach to target bad actors as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com