Hello and welcome to episode of the show which talks about the
Technologies projects and people driving decentralization.
And the blockchain revolution. My name is Brian Crane and I'm
totes. Dave, Amir Helene, and he's the
founder and CEO of helium. Helium is using kind of like Q
crypto networks to build out the wireless network, like very cool
and really excited to dive into that with him before we go into
that, just a brief word from our sponsors.
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It's tell you that cash. And with that, let's get to our
episode about helium. So I feel like, listening a
little bit, like some podcast with you and like learning a
little bit about helium. And I think there's like so
much. That's like, really fascinating
there to dive in. But also, one thing where I was
like, continuously, like I don't really like understand this.
And with, After Ike, maybe dive in, if you go like straight
there is like what's it like wireless network and like why is
why your wireless networks? Interesting?
Yeah, good question. I mean, helium definitely sort
of an odd one in the crypto space like compared to others
because we were doing the sort of physical world thing, and
that's when all the only one. But but certainly one of only
very few, you know, that the mission for helium really
started way before our crypto Adventure, like we started the
company to try and build basically, a big sensor Network,
right? Like we wanted people to be able
to connect sensors to the internet and do it really
cheaply and not have to For cell phone plan and be able to run on
batteries. And, you know, the kind of stuff
that people describe as the internet of things.
And that was sort of the mission objective of the company.
And it took us, you know, a few years of sort of trying
different approaches before we ended up realizing that sort of
decentralizing. The building of the network was
probably the best way to like, actually make that happen.
Right? Like you want to build this sort
of global scale, very ubiquitous thing and this sort of like the
we'll approach has been many billions of dollars doing that.
Right? Which is what you see from, like
a traditional Telco. Whether it's AT&T, or Vodafone,
or orange, or whatever. And then the new approach, which
I think helium is sort of pioneered here is like, don't
own the network, right? Like, let let the people build
the network and participate in the economics of it.
And that's sort of the approach that we started down in 2017 and
it's kind of where we are today. Now, I would love to maybe stay
a little bit on the even the prior question.
So you saying like, you know, an iot Network.
Why didn't it work for these sensors to connect with like why
are there particular I do use cases or, you know, is there a
particular scenario that you want to see established where
like this is really crucial? Or did you just think it was
like a big underserved Market or like what's kind of that makes
that problem. So interesting, I think both You
know, at the time that we started the company we and I
sort of mentioned this on another podcast like last week,
I think, but we actually happen to have a bunch of entrepreneur
friends that were building like connected Hardware products.
And that was a big part of like the Genesis of the company.
Was that you know, these guys had very specific problems that
they were looking to solve. Like one guy was building, you
know, connected baby monitors, kind of like a little baby
bracelet and one guy was building a people counter and
like You know. And so those are the kinds of
applications where you want to connect to the internet, but it
has to be really small and it has to be battery-powered and
has to be really cheap. And there's, you know, hundreds
or thousands, or Millions even applications that we've sort of
discovered over the years that are really, really interesting
that are impossible to serve. Some of them are like, obvious
like package. Tracking, at a granular level.
Right? Like, if I wanted to know
specifically, like we're a package, is not just what truck.
It's on, you need kind of like a throwaway types.
Answer, right? It has to be like Ultra cheap
and Ultra small and run on like a coin cell battery or something
like that. And then, you know, it goes all
the way through to like, you know, Wildfire sensors, right?
Like, where I live up here in the North Bay Area.
Like, we have a lot of fires and, you know, the Department of
Forestry is someone that we've talked to about building
Wildfire sensors, for example, right?
Like, they want to know, when's when fires start, so they can
put them out more quickly before they become like a blazing
Inferno. And so, you know, the use cases
are Like extremely wide. And I expect to start to see
like consumer applications. Like so far iot is really been
focused on my business or Enterprise or commercial things
and usually related to like asset tracking or, you know,
environmental monitoring or something like that.
But now I think because helium exists in because as a sort of
broad scale, Network that people can use really, really cheaply.
We're starting to see other types of application like there.
Now pet trackers, you know, like dog and cat trackers on the
network like bike trackers, like portable GPS, trackers like, I
think we're early and figuring out what the consumer
applications are. But I think there's going to be
plenty of them and it's going to be like even more on the
industrial and B2B side. Okay, cool.
And are there particular use cases that you're especially
excited about? I mean, the the the Wildfire one
is always been super interesting to me, just because it's
frustrating that were in like 20 22.
And we still have this problem and like we literally can't do
anything about it, right? Like a fire starts and then it's
like a hundred acres and like people homes, get destroyed and
people die. And it's you know, just one of
those things that if we had better like sensing of like, you
know, generally things will be better.
And as a result of fires. Get ready, bad air quality and
so like better air quality sensing is nice.
And, you know, there's just that I think the promise of iot was
always supposed to be like, you know, if you had this universe
of sensors, like life would just be better in general like you
would you would know much more about literally everything you
came into contact with and I still find that to be a really
interesting sort of Universe of problems.
And then, you know, as you as you may know like helium is
also. Now venturing into other types
of wireless network, right? So even though it started as an
iot Network and still, Is, you know, predominantly and iot
network also, starting to move into things like cellular and
Wi-Fi, and I think really, the really, the discovery of helium
was that, like, you could actually incentivize building,
all kinds of wireless networks this way and iot just happened
to be the first one that we thought was the least.
Well, served or had the biggest sort of pain point.
And so when you say cellular because I was hearing, I think I
heard like an old podcast of yours where you were asked that
question and then you were like basically talking about my God.
That's really hard and like, I think you asked about five T.
So, how can you talk a little bit about, you know, how has the
network it will? When you say it's going to be on
the, it's starting to go beyond this iot sensors here.
I mean, if you think about what helium really is done.
It's really to to enable people to like become participants in
like Wireless infrastructure building, right?
The fact that it was an iot Network, kind of irrelevant to
some extent, right? Like, it was really, it was
really more that we sort of hit upon the right, like, economic
design. And I, you know, I think making
it easy for people to participate in the network from
sort of a user experience. Standpoint was really important,
right? Like most crypto mining or most
like iot gateways. They're not consumer-friendly,
right? Like if you try using an A Minor
or you try using like an iot Gateway, like they suck.
And so one of the one of the things that I think we did
really well at the start was trying to make this really easy
to use for consumers. Just like random people
basically, right? And so I think that was
important. But if you think about that sort
of extrapolating it out you could you could sort of do that
with any kind of network. Or I like the fact that we
started with iot was was you know, because it was a problem
that we were keen on solving that we thought was needed.
But very quickly, we realized and started getting inbound
demand for like. Well, what about, you know,
building a cellular network this way?
Rightly. Could you could you have people
deploy, you know, equipped like our device called a hotspot.
It's like a box about that big. And the question was like, what
if there was a cellular version of that?
Right? Good people become like,
miniature cell tower hosts, basically.
And, you know, there's a lot of things that have happened over
the last few years that have now made that possible like this,
unlicensed Spectrum now that you can actually use this.
So, Spectrum access at least, in the United States.
And most of the, most of the world is the problem, right?
Like the spectrum is owned by Verizon and AT&T and T-Mobile
and like these massive like corporations and the multiple
billions of dollars spent on Spectrum, but recently the FCC
here in the states unlicensed this block of spectrum that they
call the Citizens Band Radio Service and that's a really big
deal because it means that we can operate a cellular network
without needing to spend multiple billions of dollars
buying spectrum and that's so that's a huge deal.
And the other part that makes it also huge deal.
Is that a lot of cell phones already support this rights.
If you have an iPhone 11 12, 13, or if you have any like modern
Galaxy Device or any modern pixel, like they already support
cbers as a frequency. Band, which is the other part of
the big deal, right? Like you need to be able to have
devices that can take advantage of the network.
And then the last part of the big deal is that there's now
like open-source software Stacks that allow you to run like
miniature cell towers basically, right?
So Facebook has this project called magma and that's a big
deal to because usually, you know, getting it to the cellular
like infrastructure business, even the cheapest smallest, you
know, cell tower is going to be tens of thousands of dollars in
cost. Right?
And so now all of a sudden you've got like all of these
things that make it Supposed to have a 500 dollar box, be a cell
tower, but basically right. And so that's that's sort of the
next step of helium is like, okay, we figured out how to like
incentivize the building of wireless networks in general,
and now we're going to start doing it for other stuff Beyond
iot. And the next thing that we're
really focused on is cellular. That's really interesting.
And if cellular do you think in the future?
Will it be okay? I can get, you know, mobile
phone number Mobile sort of, you know relationship.
If you know Vodafone AT&T, you know where T Mobile or helium.
Will it be like that kind of thing, or will it be more sort
of like a backbone to other cellular Networks?
I expect it to initially be more on the sort of backbone side.
Like, you know, most, it's going to getting nerdy on like cell
networks for a second, but, like most cell networks, particularly
in the states are, like, actually really, like, comprised
of, like, multiple different networks that, that work
together. Right?
So, like, even though you're using your phone and it says,
AT&T in the corner, like a lot of times you're actually hopping
around between lots of different networks that AT&T just has a
business relationship with right.
Like, especially if you go into like a Sarina or if you go into
an airport, or you go, you know, usually another company is
actually operating the cellular network inside those venues.
And then they're sharing the data back with AT&T and it's all
very seamless for the consumer Ryan.
Like for you, you're just on AT&T and like nothing has really
changed. So if you think of it in those
terms and you imagine how big helium could get as a cellular
network, it becomes like this gigantic like infrastructure
layer that I expect other networks to start to take
advantage of. So like we announced this with
Dish Network's recently. So dish is going to start
roaming their Customers on to the network.
And so that's a really big deal. But I expect it to sort of
spread to other carriers to like, there's no reason why
every carrier wouldn't want to take advantage of like, you
know, a multiple hundred thousand node Network.
That's just sitting there that you could use.
I also expect new carriers to form.
Right? Like, I know that there are lots
of companies that are looking to build, you know, carrier 2.0 or
Carrier 3.0 in the same way that, you know, lots of like
financial institutions. Now exist, that sort of the
modern-day version of a bank. Like there's lots of I've been
trying to do that and like helium becomes kind of a perfect
like infrastructure layer for them to use.
So they don't have to like deal with someone like Verizon and
it's obviously significantly cheaper and it's going to be
like located in places where it's just not feasible to like,
put a cell tower for the most part.
So, it's going to be super interesting.
It's a very different way to very different way, to build a
network, and I think that's just going to result in a network.
That's just very different, right.
It's going to be much cheaper and it's going to be in the
coverage, is going to be in places that you wouldn't usually
expect. And it's going to be I think
fascinating to watch that evolved.
Wow, that's amazing. And then he will also be of
course, Global right by default. I mean, it gets hard, like the
u.s. Is really the only modern
country that has unlicensed. So because of pain on these tdrs
for that. Exactly.
And so I'm hopeful that like everyone is going to do some
version of this because it's really a big deal to be able to
run like, you know, open source. Cellular network is like a huge
is a huge thing. And so I'm Full that other
countries are going to start to do the same thing.
But for now like we're sort of focused on the US just because
we've, you know, that problem is already solved, right?
Oh, I didn't realize. I guess the question could also
be if there's like some sort of, you know doll or treasury or
something that could be then basically by Spectrum in other
countries, and I love that. You said it's been something
that I've been thinking about for a while.
It's like, you know, you see Dao's form to by the
Constitution or like the Wu-Tang album or or Whatever.
And and you'll be awesome to think of it in a, in in sort of
the context of buying Spectrum. It's like the best possible like
people owned asset, right? It shouldn't really be owned by
like a company. And so, yeah, I love that idea.
And it's also an asset of like tremendous value that just keeps
going up in value. Right?
And so could totally see it. Unfortunately.
The entry fee is really high like, you know, multiple
billions or tens of billions, but it's possible.
It's doable. You know, I think it could be, I
think it could be done. And I think once he lie, In the
cellular world is rolling. Like, it'll be a pretty good
like, example of like, here's what you could do in, you know,
Europe if we just banded together and like, bought enough
Spectrum to go do it. Yeah, and I mean, I think the
thing is, Right, we've an idea like that.
And if you look at something like Tesla, then I think you
have to sort of like crazy improbable idea and you know,
because people were like, okay, but I, you know, I think this
has a chance and they buy up the stock and he has this like,
gigantic valuation it Especially this almost, you know, unlimited
stream of capital writer and I think crypto networks generally
often have they have that kind of dynamic, right?
And so, I think I would be pretty bullish.
That, you know, I mean, even see that right?
With something like Constitution dial, which is kind of crazy,
right? How people kind of come together
raise so much money for like this thing.
So I think we've something I expect from this would be like,
Ba, I can most people also. I don't have a good experience.
I think, with their cell phone providers, right?
They like, I really dislike. I think pretty much all of the
ones I've had. Like, yeah.
I'm, it's one of the most interesting things about the
space actually is that, like, everyone hates like, the
incumbent plate? Like, you can't find anyone that
likes like their cell provider or their ISP or their cable
provider, or like, you know, whatever, like it's like
universally, like every country, just hates these people.
Like there's something just sort of built it.
Even if the service is really good, you just are sort of like
you're supposed to hate them. And that's sort of what's
happened so that it's sort of an interesting position because it
makes it easier to sort of get in, right?
Like you don't you're not trying to convince people to like
abandon something that they love like they hate what they have
and they wish they were simple diminutive.
And so, you know, it makes it, it makes it just, it's
interesting. It's not a huge part of like the
way that we've thought about things, but it's something that
I've sort of observed over the years of doing this and it
doesn't matter what country you're Oh, do you like everyone
always has the same opinion? So before you were, you know,
you talking about decentralizing this backbone and then you know
you have or like right now you work with carriers and then
maybe you could have new carriers that emerge, you know,
I guess just based on the helium network is there but it is the
carrier itself something that you can also provide a new
decentralized way. It's a great question.
I think so. I mean the hard part of the
equation is that like you've got to sort of interact with this
blockchain and you got to interact with like tokens and
stuff like that. And and you know, the UI, I
think we did a pretty good job of like improving the UI for for
doing that, you know, like our experience is like pretty good.
But you know, I still think you have a hard time when it comes
to like things like the Fiat on and off ramps, right?
Like getting into the ecosystem to like pay for things in Tokens
and, you know, regulation makes that really hard for like,
especially us companies that want to participate in that
world, you know, like being a, being a money transmitter or
money exchanger is, is really tricky.
And so there are there are things to like think about that.
I think make the experience difficulty of like a fully
decentralized way, but I think you can get pretty close where
you don't really need like a specific entity to be your
carrier and especially, you know, Technologies like ECM now
also is a big deal, right? Like where you don't need a
physical light piece of plastic, any more that goes into your
phone. You just scan a QR code, on my
calf, on a modern phone and like, you're off and running.
And so, lots of things happening like at the same time that
really make this all possible. Now, for the first time, whereas
otherwise, it would have been like a nightmare to like, try
and tackle it even even just two or three years ago would have
been a nightmare, right, but now it's feasible and doable and I
think we've already sold something like 20,000 cellular
hotspots already. And so that's that's already
starting to That's already starting to spread around the US
and I think he's going to start accelerating for the remainder
of the year. Amazing.
And then while we're at it, what about you know, things like the
Broadband or can you do the physical wire networks?
Also you my expectation is that like technology is getting bit
good enough that you can do away with the cable part completely,
right? So like they're there are now
like enough interesting projects.
Whether it's like Facebook's Tara graph or theirs.
A company called Toronto, for example, that, you know, are
sort of working on this part religiously, right?
Like, how do I deliver like GB Broadband to the home?
Wirelessly in like some cost-effective way, right?
Where I don't need, you know, a million transmitters in a city.
I need like 50 and, you know, so I think that's going to change
that. Kind of technology is going to
change the way we think about, delivering Internet to the, he
doesn't need to be a cable like dug under the street.
Anymore, right? Like or overhead, it can be done
wirelessly now and I'm pretty confident that the technology is
like that actually works for that.
Right? And so I think if you sort of
add the helium model into it, it becomes pretty interesting,
right? Because you give like a really
interesting economic model for wisps, right?
Like wireless internet service providers and there are some of
those already. It's just a difficult Market to
be in right now. What's the difference between a
wisp in the normalize p.i.? Wisp delivers the internet
connection completely wirelessly, right?
So, there's no, there's no cable involved.
Residence. Similar to like so much like
starlink, right? Like, starlink.
You're getting it from a satellite, but from a whisper,
you're getting it from, like, a transmitter, that's in the same
city, right? Like, it's somewhere nearby and
it is connected to the internet with like fiber or something
like that. But it, but now the technology
is pretty good where it doesn't have to be like a direct line of
sight like it. I used to have to be like it can
sort of like travel through things.
And so it starts to become feasible that you could cover a
whole city would like 50 of those devices or 100 of those
devices. And then all of a sudden you
don't need to be digging trenches and having cables
anymore. You can deliver like GB
Broadband to the home with like 50 transmitters in a city, if
they're if they're sort of spread out well, and so that
kind of stuff is awesome to me because That's like the worst
part of the internet ride. Like is that you, you can
decentralize all you want at the, a player like at the web 3.
So 2 part, but if you, if you haven't figured out like how to
like open access to the internet in the first place.
Then you're always stuck with with old business model of like
meta data, collection and privacy violations and like
advertising, right? Like you can't get away from it
until you fix that part of connecting to the internet.
So for me personally, like, I'm I'm fascinated by by that part
and I think, in general the internet is very hostile towards
privacy stuff. You know, like if you try and
use a VPN, I'm like identifying like crosswalks and like, you
know, bicycles every 10 seconds on the capture things.
And so, you know, just the internet is like not designed
for like vpns and like privacy. And so, I'm optimistic that
that's going to change over time.
And I think decentralizing, like access to the internet itself is
a very big and important part of that equation.
Yeah, that's was exactly what. Came up in my mind, when you
were speaking before I think, has you.
Yeah, that is always one thing, right?
Up bothers you sort of, as a Cryptid users are, okay, you can
use all those things. But, in some, in some way, it's
a feels you're going through is kind of tight, right?
Which is connected, which is controlled by, this is P.
That like, I don't know who they are.
I don't know like what they can do.
And so I think then you have right, you've had a guess, a
bunch of projects that You know, I mean things like tour or then
you have things like maybe some people working on a
decentralized or versions, right?
This is named thing and I don't know what's going on with that
now but there was a project called Orchid at some point, but
actually, I mean that you're the name thing kind of makes sense
to me for that any crypto transaction, but really you want
to have the, you know, more fundamental decentralization.
I think. So that sounds really amazing.
How yeah, it's um, it's one of the these things where like, you
know, as I was saying, like there's a bunch of like DV p n
projects. I think like Orchid is one of
them and there's like a handful of others and but like I said,
like the user experience of using a VPN is just not very
good. Like I go to Google and I'm now
in like some other country, all of a sudden, right?
And like a Google is not useful for me anymore because like
Google showed up in Arabic, right?
And I'm not using an Arabic keyboard and like, you know what
I mean? And so, and Everywhere You Go,
you've got to capture to solve like literally everywhere.
And so it's it's just the Experience of using vpns is bad
because the internet is bad. Right?
Like it depends so much on knowing where you are, where you
are and who you are that? Like everything is designed
around that those two, those two things.
And so even when you've got stuff like the vpns and the D
vpns, it's still not great for consumers, which is why it's not
like a huge, not a huge business.
The VPN provider, right? Like it's not.
Not like, consumers aren't clamoring to like be more
private online. And I think part of it is just
because It sucks as an experience and part of it is.
I think, just because users, just don't care that much yet.
But hopefully they, hopefully, they will.
Right. So if you, you know, if helium
gets, you know, widespread, you know kind of succeeds mean what
one of the issues is also that, in many places.
You don't have, you know, kind of open access to the internet,
you know, because you have like no firewall or they, they shut
down certain, you know, like sometimes he had countries shut
down Facebook or social media. Governments, if there are local
people using that too much too. Is this something where you
could build a much more kind of censorship resistant Network
that, you know, governments can't censor easily.
I think it makes it harder. It sort of depends on the, like,
level of like censorship, right? I mean, if you know, building
internet access using something like helium, makes it much more
difficult for someone to shut down, just because there's
multiple sort of providers of the internet, right?
Like literally everyone in can become an internet provider, the
part that's still easy to shut down.
If you're like, a government is, is the sort of main backbone to
the internet, right? Like, people still need to
connect to the Core internet, somehow.
So, you know that, I don't know, it'll be interesting to watch
how that evolves. That's still very much like
cables under the ocean kind of, you know, infrastructure like
there isn't, there isn't a great way to like, get back to the
internet yet, but it's like truly censorship resistant.
So, yeah, I mean, I think it improves the situation, but I
don't think it like, it's a perfect solution to like, I
don't know, like Iran, like turning off, like all access to
the internet or something. Like I don't know that you can
really get around that yet, but there's in Interesting stuff.
I mean like you could deliver it from the sky, you know, like
people like Google was doing this with balloons.
And, you know, starlink is obviously not doing it with
satellites and it's, you know, there was become much, much
harder to like sensor, right? Like I don't like, how are you
going to like, stop access to a satellite?
And Riley could have to go around and find every satellite
dish and take it out. Right?
And so stuff is heading. I think in the right direction
where there are more and more options and like helium is one
of those tools. I think that will help in that
Fight. Pretty sad about this.
That is something that's very needed.
Yeah, I mean, helium is grown as grown like, like I think what
we've seen over the last like two and a half years of helium.
Existing is it's grown from like zero hotspots to like 600
thousand hot spots with another like three million on back
order, you know, something like 75% of the u.s.
Zip codes has access to helium now and like, you know, it's
grown at like an insane Pace, right?
And so I think I think what It's shown, is that people want
something like this? Like they want some way to like
stick it to the incumbent like telcos.
They want some way to earn like passive income.
They want some way to like get involved in crypto, you know,
like there's a lot of things that came together at the same
time to make this interesting for people.
And I like I said, I think we did a pretty good job of like
making the user interface like easy for people, which was the
other part of crypto that I think has traditionally been not
very good outside of like centralized services like
coinbase and stuff. That's all.
Improving, you know, like the wallets are getting better.
Like the apps are getting better, you know, like
everything is sort of improving. But yeah, I think helium has
done a phenomenal job. It's in, you know, I can't even
remember how many countries but thousands of like tens of
thousands of cities hundreds of countries, and I expect there to
be three or four million hot spots on the network over the
next 24 months. One another way that I was sort
of like, thinking about helium a little bit.
That seemed interesting to me is, you know, Bitcoin.
You can also think of as it's this sort of economic it is
incentive system that has bootstrap.
Also, you know, kind of deployment of days, you know,
physical Network. Whether you have all these
miners running this specialized machines, you know, that tend to
be maybe more larger facilities, right?
Because they took need to get cheaper.
Christie and diseconomies of scale there, but you know, you
still have to, you know, massive investment in this, pretty
decentralized physical Network. And then here, we actually have
sort of the same thing, but with a different characteristic,
right? And it seems to be much more
geographically distributed and you don't have this kind of you
don't have these economies of scale.
I think in the same way that you have like, Bitcoin mining.
So Yeah, I'm curious. Like what what do you think is
this significance of that? Or like what are some of the
possibilities that that opens? Yeah, I mean, one thing that's
hard about helium and anything, like it is that unlike Bitcoin,
where where, you know, just sheer quantity of minors is good
enough, right? Like they could all be in the
same place. Even you know, helium has like
depends on like very specific like geographic distribution,
right? Like a network that's in one
city is useful, but it's not as useful as a network that's in
every city or in every country. And so, But there are some
economies there. I mean, like, we're all the, all
the hot spots on the network are using the same physical.
At least components, like, parts of the hotspot are all the same.
So there's some economies of scale that are occurring there
because, you know, vendors are all Bonnie similar parts and
those parts are getting cheaper, as they get as the volume
increases, the supply chain over the last couple of years has not
been great, you know, because we because of covid and Chip
shortages and like everything, which is affecting like multiple
different. Is.
But in general, you know, a lot of the components are shared and
I think as we move into cellular like that's even more true.
Like a lot of the chips come from like Qualcomm, for example,
right? So like every vendor is buying
stuff from Qualcomm. And so, you know, you get the
same sort of economies of scale that as you would in a more
centralized approach because everyone is using like
approximately the same kind of hard work.
And I mean, all of these hot spots, right?
They also have private key and ncos implicitly wallet.
Do you think that wallet? You know, these how do you think
I will have like usage beyond the kind of narrow function?
It hasn't any heating network and on how do you think that's
going to kind of integrate into, you know, people's digital
assets and how they manage them. Yeah.
It's you know, Hot spots are kind of like nft.
He's really right. Like they are they have a
private key and they are they are non fault fungible in a way.
Right? Like they have sort of unique
locations and and unique characteristics that are
different. So I think it's interesting like
they're arguably like they're some of the first like physical
world like nft s, right? And and that's kind of an
interesting idea. But the rest of the wallet
management has all has all been done, you know, in the
traditional way, right? Like, there's a mobile app.
There's a, you know, you can use Ledger like, etc.
Etc. So, I don't know.
It's a good question. Actually.
I haven't, I don't think we've thought about what you could do
at the edge there like that. Knowing that like, there are,
you know, three million sort of, private key wallet type things
out there that you could probably do something with.
I do think we're starting to have the conversation with lots
of different projects similar to what you're describing where
there's a bunch of like DVP and projects.
For example who are like, okay, we perfect if we could run our
VPN software on your Six hundred thousand hot spots because
that's, you know, a pretty massive like VPN network.
Although all of a sudden, right. So I think there are those kinds
of conversations that are sort of obvious where it's like,
okay, you've got this massive distributed network of nodes.
Like what else could you do with it?
Like it's good for a wireless network, but it might also be
good for a bunch of other stuff. And so I think we're going to
start to see some like really interesting things come out.
But the VPN one is like I said, always been interesting to me
because I'm always so interested in privacy and anonymity so that
one is always Something that's sort of close to my heart and I
would love to figure out a way to like enable some sort of
decentralized VPN running on on helium nodes because it's sort
of the perfect distribution of hardware for it.
I would love it. If you could, maybe dive a
little bit more deeply into, you know, kind of like this idiom
Network. And like, how does the network
look like? So, you know, you've talked
about the wireless network, right?
And then you have to, you know, the cellular network right way.
She said, you know, different devices.
So can you talk a bit about, you know, what is the architecture
of the human Network? You know, what are the different
domain? Of participants in the system
and what are their roles? Yeah, so there's I mean I think
a few different ways to think about it.
So at its core, you know, helium is a layer 1 Block Chain.
So it's a completely sort of from scratch written blockchain
Network that doesn't build on top of anything else.
And most of that is because we started this in 2016 or 2017 and
there really wasn't a lot to use back then.
Like you're either were building on top of a theorem which was
which we thought was going to be too expensive, even back then or
you were Forking Bitcoin or, you know, doing something like that.
And so we build something from scratch.
So at its core, it's sort of a layer one, like proof of stake.
Blockchain. There's 3,500 validators.
Who are responsible for like, block, production, transaction,
verification and validation. They stake, 10,000 H and T,
which is the H. And T is the sort of native
token on on helium. So something like 35, 40 % of
the supply of H and T is staked in validators.
Who run the network and then you've got the hot spot hosts
themselves. And I think the best way of
thinking about hotspots as they're kind of like a
combination of a crypto Miner and a wireless access point.
Basically, like it's a it's a sort of Dual Purpose device and
the crypto mining part is done through an algorithm that we
call proof of coverage. And so it's, you know, we wanted
to try and really the problem that we're trying to solve was
like, how do you build the network at the star drive?
Because there are a lot of devices to use the network.
Work yet when you're when you're building and if there are none.
So you've got to kind of build it first and figure out how to
build it and in the physical world application.
Like the hard part is like, how do you prove that?
There's actually any hardware? And like, how do you prove that?
Any of it is real. Like, how does the blockchain
know that there's real, There's real access points out there.
So we built this algorithm called proof of coverage where
hotspots transmit these encrypted data packets,
wirelessly and the range of a hotspot is extremely large.
Grates on the order of the worst case.
It's about a mile and in the best case.
It's like a hundred miles, you know, these hot spots transmit.
This is sort of encrypted data back and forth with each other,
like the sort of challenge protocol and the hotspots earn
hnt for this this work that they do, right?
Like the sort of proof of coverage is the equivalent of
our of proof of work in Bitcoin, or something, in our, in our
world and the hot spots are rewarded differently, right?
So if you're creating like a big coverage area, you know, for
hundreds of miles because you you're on top of A cell tower or
something. Then you earn more than someone
who just has it in their window home, you know, because you're
trying to build a build a network.
And so that's sort of the those are the two sort of host
characteristics of the, of the network.
And then the other side is users, which are, which are
people actually using the network.
And so, those those today are mostly companies and so their
companies like Salesforce and Volvo and Costco and Toyota and
like companies that actually run sensors on the helium network
are the other sort of participant in the network and
they They have to spend each and T in order to actually use the
network or it and that, that money goes to the that agency
goes to the to the hotspot hosts for those are, you know, those
are sort of the main three actors, you've got like
validators, hotspot, hosts and users are really like the three
characteristics in the system. And then when you start to think
about like other types of wireless network, it will work
this, the kind of the same way. Right?
Like, you'll have cellular hotspots that participate in
cellular proof of coverage. And then their cellular users,
which will be, you know, mobile phone.
On people mobile phone networks, you know, things like that.
So every type of wireless network will have it the same
sort of characteristics where they're sort of someone on the
supply side like the host. And then there's someone on the
demand side, which will be two users and it sort of will depend
on the type of network as the like who those people are.
Proof of coverage, are there. You know, how secure is this?
Are they like attack scenarios that somebody can spoof things
and trick hotspots. Yeah.
I mean, it's an ongoing amount of work, right?
I mean, as hnt is become valuable in the network has
become valuable, you know, like the attack surface is increased.
Right? Like people have figured out
ways to sort of trick the system or take advantage of like
characteristics of the system that were Either like bugs in
the first place or just things that we didn't think about at
the time or just really sort of characteristics of the fact that
the network has sort of evolved and gotten big and valuable.
So like one example, we, you know, we just are in the process
of like fixing this thing where if you happen to have like a lot
of hot spots offline near your hot spot, then you get
challenged in proof of coverage more than you should.
And so people have figured this out and you know, have started
to take advantage of the fact that like if they can find like
a spot with Like a bunch of offline hot spots, they can put
their hot spot there and like make a bunch more money.
And so, you know, you're constantly it's a very big and
complicated project. Like there's a lot of pieces,
all of them are built from scratch For Better or For Worse.
And so, you know, it's a constantly sort of evolving
process to sort of find these problems and improve them and
fix them and sort of think about the future of it all.
And I think one of the great thing that's happened is that
the helium Community has gotten bigger and more active, right?
So a lot of this Comes from the community itself rather than
from the core development team and I think ultimately what you
want. Right?
Like with the project at this scale like you want a very
active and involved community and that's, you know, that's
kind of what we've ended up with.
So, so, yeah, it's certainly not perfect but by any means, but
it's heading in the right direction.
And then you see this as kind of like 16.
So for example, AT&T you would use that same token for the
wireless network and for the cellular network, and it's
basically like a single token. Yeah.
I mean, we're right now this there's sort of two tokens
really in the system, right? There's there's hnt which is the
main token that you earn for being a hotspot host.
It's the thing that you see, you know, being being exchanged.
But if you want to use the network, there's Second token
called the data credit and that's kind of like a stable
coin of some kind, right? Like it.
It is fixed in value relative to the dollar.
Right? So it's always point zero, zero,
zero, zero one dollars and the nice thing about that system is
that it's very predictable and cost.
In terms of how you use the network.
Like it's always going to cost you the same amount of like US
Dollars. And the way that you acquire
data credits is by destroying hnt, right.
So, if you want H, if you want data, The credits, you have to
take H and T and like burn it and the ratio of that changes,
right? Because ancient he's value is
fluctuating. And so, you know, depending on
how much AT&T is worth, when you burn one hnt, you end up with a
different amount of data credits, depending on what the
value of H and T is at the time, but it's a neat system because
it solves, one of the biggest problems for like utility
networks, which is how do you make it predictable for users?
Right? Like if you, if you use the
actual like native token, and the value of the Native token is
like fluctuating wildly. You know, one day it might cost
you like a dollar to use the network and the next day it
might cost you like a hundred dollars, right?
And so we had to figure out a way to like make it stable and
predictable and and having data credits kind of act as a stable
coin was was the way to do that. So it's a really neat system and
it's worked well because it reminds people of like cell
phone minutes or airline miles or like something that they're
something that they're really used to.
I think we have this system right in the end.
The interesting amazing thing, right?
Is also that you have this, you know, the essentially owned
Network. So, of course, at that point,
you know, governance also becomes interesting.
So how do you how this agent T. How does the network governance
work today? And how do you see that evolving
in the future? So there is a sort of
improvement proposal process that we borrowed from Bitcoin
called the hip. And today, pretty much anyone
can create a hip, right? Like, you can sort of propose,
whatever, whatever it is that you want.
And there's a voting process that is weighted using H and T.
So people vote on whether they like these proposals or not.
There's a lot, there's heat, there's many, proposals for
like, how to improve the proposal process or like the
proposal process should be. The governance process should be
different. The voting process should be
different. Like everyone has their own
opinion about how this should work.
And I think, you know, helium is somewhat unique in that.
It has sort of a different set of constituents than traditional
Block Chain networks. And so that poses like a
different kind of challenge. But yeah, I mean again, I don't,
I'm not, I don't think any Block Chain network has figured out
governance. It's at all, like, in any
reasonable way. Right?
Like, if you look at Bitcoin core, it's kind of like gate
kept by. Whoever the Bitcoin core like
me. Tributaries are and GitHub and
the serum Foundation kind of decides what to do with the
theory. Mm, and you know, the coins that
use like weighted Stakes, like are dominated by whales who own
all the currency, you know, so none of it is like perfect but
there's the again a lot of like really good suggestions and on a
lot of good proposals on like how to improve the governance.
But but today it's sort of the steak waited process and we've
actually had a lot of like, great Improvement.
Proposals come through the community.
That have been implemented. I think we're starting to go
hard now. Is that the complexity of like
actually writing the code is quite high.
So to implement any of these changes like takes a lot of like
engineering work and so the sort of Engineering Group or the
engineering side of the community needs to grow as well.
Otherwise, you just sort of passing proposals that can't
believe can be implemented because there's no one, you
know, there's no one who has the bandwidth to implement them.
And so that's sort of the next evolution of helium.
I think is that the engineering side of the community will need
to grow. And actually, start
participating, in, in writing code against the project.
Yeah, that is also I think a hard thing to do in this kind of
decentralized, right? Where even today I'm in most
blockchains, you tend to have you know, and Main development
team that kind of toss the work. Yeah, definitely can be a
challenge, right. When there's a disconnect
between proposals people make and then you know, the team that
actually builds stuff. Yeah, and I think it's, you
know, it's an interesting problem, right?
Because you The team can only do so much, right?
And so, we have like a core development team already has
like a very massive backlog of like major issues and problems
and improvements that it's working on.
And so while it's great for people to make proposals on
improvements that they want to see, you know, it's always, it's
not always reasonable to expect that.
The core development team is just going to shift their
priorities to like work on that proposal, right?
And again, I think every every project has this problem until
the engineering community. Leti for that project gets big
enough, right? And then and then, the problem
starts to get solved because there's enough, like,
engineering resources to, like, actually work on this stuff.
But, yeah, I mean, not sure what to really say about it or do
about it other than to continue to like try and Foster more of
that, like that the helium Foundation, or the actually has
a bunch of Grant sort of open for this kind of stuff.
So there's, you know, incentive for people to start doing some
of this work. But, yeah, I mean, Engineers
always hard to come by and, you know, the best ones are usually
busy. Something.
So trying to sort of attract them to new projects is always a
challenge. I mean, to be honest.
I don't think there's any Block Chain that has sort of figured
that out right because in the end you have that Bitcoin each
area where this actually isn't that kind of proposal process
and then so I don't think there's any blockchain where
you're at the stage. I mean, it's also coordination
problem of like, you know, how can you get potentially a
decentralized governance like, you know, manage software
development. Yeah, and it's hard.
I mean I think Bitcoin has this problem like in a severe way,
right? Like there's no there's no like
if you're a distributed system / blockchain engineer your highly
incentivized to go work on like Solano or Avalanche or polka dot
or you know, because those guys have like, massive treasuries
are going to pay a lot of money to go to go do it.
Whereas Bitcoin doesn't really have that built-in right?
Like there's no real Financial incentive to work on bitcoin and
Makes it hard if people have bills to pay and like lives to
live. And, you know, you can't just
work on on, on Good Vibes, you know, it's like, these people
happen to, like, make money. And that that's, that's a
challenge. I think in all of these systems,
and mostly I've seen it solved through like grants, you know,
so like, they'll be specific problems that a project is
looking to solve and like, will offer a sort of a grant, in
order to solve that problem and that hopefully, that sort of
Spurs the ecosystem. But yeah, I agree with you.
I think it's generally like an Solved problem.
And like the core engineering team is sort of always the core
engineering team. But yeah, I hope I'm hoping that
will change over time because it's the only way that these
things really will scale. Like you can't depend on a
single team. It's just, it's too much work
and too fragmented. And is there also a kind of
community pool or, you know, mechanism where the community
uses governance to directly from work?
We don't really have that today, but it's something that I would
definitely like to see. And I think there are some good
examples of other other projects that have done a good job of
that. And so, yeah, I would love to
see see more of that going forward.
But today, the, the sort of Grants are managed by the
foundation team, and they sort of decide how that goes and take
input from the community on, on how to do it.
And how do you think about the interoperability?
So, do you see helium? Yeah, how do you see it?
Interoperating with all the blockchain.
So the smart contract ecosystems.
Yeah, it's a thing that I wish was it's one of the downsides of
building your own own thing, you know, like in.
And at the time, I don't think there was a lot of alternative,
like we sort of, have to do it that way.
But I would love for hnt to be sort of a participant in like
the defy ecosystem, for example, and that's not really happening
today. And so there are a few groups
working on Bridges and wormholes to other chains.
So, there's there's a group working on an Al Gore and one as
a group, working in a Salon 01. I'd love to see something on
ethereum. So I liked it bridging approach.
I mean there's obviously been a few hacks and and attacks on the
bridges over the years, which makes sense.
They're like high-profile with a lot of money and we'll see it,
you know, over time, you know, maybe the sort of LED your part
of helium moves to some existing layer one.
And, you know, the delete the layer to sort of remain on
helium as their own sort of miniature blockchains, like,
there's a proposal like that in the community right now, so
we'll see. But I think it's highly valuable
for H and D to be to be part of that greater ecosystem and part
of that broader ecosystem. For sure.
Yeah, and I think that will fix a, you think of something like
this buying buying Spectrum idea, right?
I mean in essence that's like a huge financial transaction and
then, I think if you can do that, so as part of this crypto
Financial system that will, you know, unlock a lot of probably
possibilities that, you know, you can't have if you're if you
you don't have those connections.
It's a challenge for sure. I mean, it's it again.
It's one of those like problems, right?
Like where everyone is sort of building their own blockchain
with their own community. And you know, the sort of
bridging is supposed to be the solution to that.
I think, you know, what's hard still, is that none of the smart
contract. Block teams are really capable
of doing something quite as complicated, as helium as a
layer 2 or sort of on top of the, of those networks.
I could just too much State and like, too much, too much stuff,
too. To try and manage.
So I think that's part of what makes it difficult is that, you
know, you'd have to figure out some sort of combination where,
like, you know, you still have validators like running the
network, but The Ledger is on a different is on the different
chain or something like that, you know, we're looking into
that kind of stuff and like I said, there's a few proposals in
the community about how how we might want to do that.
So, yeah, it's something I'm personally quite excited to
like, figure out how to do, but I think for now, like, it would
probably be a bridge or a wormhole or like some, you know,
some equivalent like I would be the best way to like make it
happen quickly. Yeah, I mean, I think that would
be a fine solution. Oh, yeah, you have things like
ax law and Wormhole and I think they were fairly easily connect
helium to, you know, all the all the block chains and I think it
will be the best solution probably or you have things like
iidc but that's more work to implement think.
Yeah for sure. I'm in India also see like
enabling the deployment of smart contracts.
Cleon helium as a Direction. It's possible.
I mean there's a proposal in the community right now to sort of
basically have helium be sort of a network of networks right?
Where there's lots of different types of wireless network that
live outside of the second layer.
And so how that's implemented. I think remains to be seen but I
could see it. I could see it being possible.
But I think the purpose of the smart contracts would have to be
like quite precise. Like, I don't think there's a
whole lot of value and helium trying to be like another smart.
Contract blockchain is already like so many of them that that
are focused just on doing that. Then we'll certainly do it
better than we could. So I think if they were smart
contracts would have to be like specific to a purpose, like
deploying wireless networks, or deploying networks or deploying
like distributed applications, like that that are networking
related or something very specific to like this sort of
purpose of what helium is. Otherwise, I think you're in
danger of just being another like Just like it.
Like I oh too. Kind of reminds me of that.
Right? Like now it's sort of like
another is the back. It's like an avalanche clone now
and they don't really know what distinguishes, something like IO
different Avalanche. And so I think you got to be a
little bit careful about trying to just do it all because
there's already, you know, there's already people that are
already doing that. I'm going to do a better job
than we could. Yeah, that's that's a tricky.
I think that's a sort of tricky balance.
I mean II can, I've worked a lot in the cosmos ecosystem and
there. I think there's also a lot.
Of this that kind of balance, right?
We have like you launch a chain and then he has certain
functionality and then, you know, maybe some people want to
add things to the chain and then there's a question of case.
This is like a governance process, which makes it very
hard to innovate. Or if it becomes like a general,
smart contract thing, then it again, has it comes away.
Maybe a bit from this being very purpose, specific and maybe also
will have, you know, issues in terms of performance, right?
If there's too much other stuff running on there.
Yeah, it's just you know, it's just it's not a problem that
like helium is focused on like we're here to like help build
Network infrastructure in the decentralized way and not for
like minting and ftes or like building some sort of defy
platform or something. Right?
Like there's already so many places to do that.
And so I think to me, that would be, you know, if we went down
the smart contract path, like that, would, that would sort of,
we need to be its focus. What are the biggest challenges
that you see in the future? Yeah, it's good question.
I mean, I think the thing that I probably worried about the most
in the short term is is you know, as we add more wireless
network. So things like cellular and
Wi-Fi and stuff. Like making sure that the
incentive model is like good enough, you know, because you're
going to start like Distributing hnt across like multiple
different types of network. And so it's going to start
getting more diluted than it is today where it's, you know, sort
of whole going to a single type of network.
And so that's going to be an interesting type of challenge,
right? Like as, as the 5G Network
grows, you know, it's going to be taking away rewards from the
iot network, right? And so there's going to be a
little bit of competition like among networks, which may be
good. But may also be bad and so not
exactly sure how that's going to go.
But that's that's definitely a concern that I have is a lot of
technical challenges that will face.
I mean, I think helium is already the largest peer-to-peer
Network that has ever been built and it's like 600,000 nodes on a
On a peer-to-peer Network. Like all the time is, I think
the largest ever and so there are all sorts of engineering
challenges that come with that, that really only have been
solved in theory. You know, like there's a lot of
theoretical writing about peer-to-peer networks at this
size. Not that many have actually done
it. And so there's that kind of
stuff. I think we have the right road
map already to sort of mitigate a lot of that.
But you know just dealing with something at this scale is is a
huge undertaking. I think we've started something.
Five billion requests to the, to the API server over the last
month or something like that. And so, you know, it's had a
large scale where like scaling problem has become real,
especially, especially, scaling problems, that don't have like,
well known solutions that I think scaling web applications
is quite well. Understood scaling like
peer-to-peer networks is not really well understood.
And so there are you know, there just are challenges there that
we're facing and working through.
But overall. I think I worry about them less
than Economic challenges. Yeah, I think I can see that as
being a hard problem. Right?
Because in the end you're sort of using the expectation of the
future returns, maybe of the different networks to pay now,
but, you know, you don't know what those are like, can you
like, what's the usage today? You know, are how much sort of
Cabo, you know how much business those the network do in terms
of, you know, packages. It's selling to sensors or other
users. Yeah, I mean II think, you know,
on the sensor side, one of the challenges, I think, with iot in
general, is that like the market for you hasn't really existed
properly, because there really hasn't been any network for iot
stuff to really use like, on a broad scale.
Like most people who have sort of operated in iot have done it
like in the confines of like they're building or in the
warehouse or like, you know what I mean?
And so that they haven't really been many applications where you
assume that there was a network that was kind of like, Like a
cell network or a mobile network.
And so, you kind of like the hard part about helium in the
iot space is that you're sort of bootstrapping both sides of the
network at the same time. Like you're trying to build like
a big coverage Network and then you're also trying to like, get
people who are interested in iot or have problems or have like
applications to start building them and everything.
When when Hardware is involved, is slow, right, liked it for
someone to build a sensor application to build a hundred
thousand sensors. For example, is Always going to
be like, an 18 month job. Right?
Like there's really not, at least, not from what I've seen.
Like, there's not a way to like shortcut that that length of
time because you've got to like, you know, test the thing and
certify it and you know, there's just so many steps required to
like actually make something work and then manufacture it.
So that part is tricky. And so with the cellular
network, you don't have the same problem.
We have a slightly different problem, but there's a lot of
end users and there's a lot of known applications like, you
know, there's multiple billion cell phones out there, right?
And So, you kind of know who your users are.
You don't have the same problem? You have a customer acquisition
problem, but it's a different, you know, different type of
problem than you have in the OT universe.
And so, yeah, so so it's, you know, it's definitely.
It's definitely a challenge that requires a lot of patience
because you've got to sort of everyone involved in helium has
to sort of understand that the iot side of the network is going
to take years in order for real usage to come because real usage
is going to require Manufacturing.
Lots and lots of sensors and just that process alone is
always going to be like a couple of years long.
Even once the problem is identified and solution tested
and everything else. So yeah, it's slow and I you
know, I think that's a part that I wish we knew how to make it go
faster, but I'm not convinced that there is not convinced that
there is actually a way. So you talked a little bit about
privacy, but I would be curious about privacy specifically with
regards to like iot, I mean, and some level that You know, seems
a little bit scary to, right? Because if I serve already not
so good. And then you also have like, you
know, a lot more devices that are giving away, lots more data
continuously. Do you think it will be possible
to have, you know, iot widely adopted, while you know
maintaining or maybe even improving people's privacy.
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I think the Privacy
concern is different than sort of the big internet privacy
concern. Liked it to me.
The big internet privacy concern is more like, you know, an ISP
knows my browsing history and you know, no sort of everything
that I do on the internet at least at some level.
There's definitely potential for a concern in the iot space or
like you have a lot of sensors all over the place.
They could, for sure could be used maliciously.
But that the sort of approach is a little bit different, right?
Like it's not you're not really connected to the internet in the
same way. But yeah, I mean, I think, I
think we always have to be calling some of the fact that
like there's danger there, like people could track people
without without their consent. So I think people have really
started to do that with like are tags, for example, rightly.
They drop them in people's purses or in their car or
whatever. And all of a sudden you have
like a tracking device on someone that they don't know is
there. And so I think you've always got
to be worried about that kind of stuff, but it's probably not
necessarily unique to iot. Look, thanks for watching
mirror. It's been really, really great
to hear about UV mapping and he's like, just an amazing
accomplishment. I think to build this like, you
know, physical crypto controlled Network out and and I'm I'm
really excited about it. Like all the things that would
become possible with it. I think also that the
intersection between crypto applications and, you know,
having a dis physical Network. I think will be very powerful.
So yeah. Thanks so much for coming on to
me. Yeah.
Thanks. Thanks for having me.
I'm glad you're interested and excited about what helium is
doing and super excited to see to see what comes next.
Cool. And thanks so much for your,
thank you for joining us on this week's episode.
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