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This thread lacks factual information : no source for the $6.5k/month revenue, and no source for the LoRaWAN market analysis supposedly demonstrating it is a "f

This thread lacks factual information : no source for the $6.5k/month revenue, and no source for the LoRaWAN market analysis supposedly demonstrating it is a "fake, overblown use case" Actually I would be interested in understanding better the choice made by Helium and the current and future use of LoRaWAN. When I first heard about Helium some years ago I wondered why they focused on this protocol compared to WiFi or cellular network technology. Which kind of devices are supposed to connect to Helium ? I suppose it is IoT devices, but most of them actually work perfectly fine with good old cellular networks

bmitc 4y ago
It is my understanding that the goal is to expand the network to include WiFi and cellular devices, in addition to LoRaWAN devices.
joewadcan 4y ago
Exactly the reverse. Most IOT sensors suffer because of cost, battery, and engineering complexity for a cell based connection. Helium solves all three - even more important now that 3G is being phased out making thousands of IOT sensors obsolete
_fizz_buzz_ 4y ago
> Helium’s economy looks moderate or small, depending on how you parse the numbers. According to Token Terminal, Helium’s revenue in June totaled $2.6 million. That’s down from the April high of $5.5 million but a 73% improvement over the same period a year earlier. In 2020, Helium’s June revenue was below $200,000. Eddy Lazzarin, the head of protocol design at a16z, noted that when his firm first invested in Helium, “the last ninety days had something like $600.” It has come a long way since then. > However, this is only part of the picture. Data Credits are used when onboarding a hotspot, asserting a location, and processing a payment. Onboarding hotspots, in particular, is intensive from a Data Credit perspective. Since Helium is onboarding so many new hotspots, this skews results, suggesting greater customer activity than is actually present. Data from The Decentralized Wireless Alliance removes these three uses, demonstrating the size of the Helium economy’s customer demand. By this measure, DC usage was just $6,561 in June. https://www.readthegeneralist.com/briefing/helium https://www.readthegeneralist.com/briefing/helium
- oefrha 4y ago
  Context for commenters who can’t be bothered the read the article: it’s not a hit piece, it’s actually a glowing praise of Helium: > Nova Labs’ Internet of Things network is one of crypto’s greatest achievements.
thunfischbrot 4y ago
LoRaWAN generally can use less energy than cellular networks, running off batteries for e.g. 7 years, where cellular would run out within 1-2. This is somewhat mitigated by NB-IoT, which was not available in most markets just two years ago. International LoRaWAN providers such as TheThingsIndustries and Helium can have advantages if you have a low, low data transmission interval and don't care about the (supposed) guarantees a traditional mobile carrier SLA would give you. On the other hand, since neither Helium not The Things Industries owns their gateways (run by the community) and operates in an unlicensed spectrum (much less likely to discover and fine those who disrupt communications due to negligence or even on purpose), one might opt to simply use TTN (even less promises on network quality than TheThingsIndustries) or NB-IoT. There are great use-cases for LoRaWAN, though Helium comes with more drawbacks than advantages for most.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  IoT is a real market. But I have no idea why anyone investing in probably rather big of a system wouldn't pick a reliable proven partner with support and guarantees that they can actually make it work.
boffinism 4y ago
> no source for the $6.5k/month revenue It's in a photo attached to the first tweet: https://readthegeneralist.com/briefing/helium https://readthegeneralist.com/briefing/helium > Data Credits are used when onboarding a hotspot, asserting a location, and processing a payment. Onboarding hotspots, in particular, is intensive from a Data Credit perspective. Since Helium is onboarding so many new hotspots, this skews results, suggesting greater customer activity than is actually present. Data from The Decentralized Wireless Alliance removes these three uses, demonstrating the size of the Helium economy’s customer demand. By this measure, DC usage was just $6,561 in June.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
andylynch 4y ago
This kind of technology is intended for sensor networks- think water meters, pipeline monitoring, EV chargers and the like. The problem I see with helium is much more of a commercial one; the big customers will need much better established network operators who can commit to operating such systems for decades. The money is there, but equally for customers investing in the wrong platform is risky too- eg this happened with the UK’s first generation smart meters, where many became ‘dumb’ again due to lack of interoperability between operators. It’s still being having at a cost of several tens of million of pounds. The solution which is also relevant to Helium by way of contrast was to set up a ‘Smart Data Communications Company’ as a regulated utility, and have that operate and develop the relevant networks. It generated around £430M in 2021 revenue as a non-profit. I can only guess Helium’s strategy is to subsidise it’s infrastructure until someone (really multiple someone’s) like ConEd can be convinced to use it but there are an awful lot of steps along the way I don’t understand their plan for.
michaelt 4y ago
> Which kind of devices are supposed to connect to Helium ? I suppose it is IoT devices, but most of them actually work perfectly fine with good old cellular networks You're right that there are some IoT applications where a cellular connection makes sense. If you need to know when a vending machine needs restocking, spending $5/month on a SIM card is good business. But some things have more marginal benefits. A city might like to know which streetlights are working and which aren't. If they can get that functionality for $5 per light with no ongoing costs, that's worth it. But if it's an ongoing $5/light/month? It's probably not worth that much - after all, they get fault reports from citizens for free. Whether Helium can support the latter use case usefully I have no idea. And it's not clear to me why they need a blockchain, or whether it's good business sense to target people too miserly to use a cellular connection. But there's certainly use cases out there for connections that are cheaper than cellular connections.

bmitc 4y ago

It is my understanding that the goal is to expand the network to include WiFi and cellular devices, in addition to LoRaWAN devices.

joewadcan 4y ago

Exactly the reverse. Most IOT sensors suffer because of cost, battery, and engineering complexity for a cell based connection. Helium solves all three - even more important now that 3G is being phased out making thousands of IOT sensors obsolete

_fizz_buzz_ 4y ago

> Helium’s economy looks moderate or small, depending on how you parse the numbers. According to Token Terminal, Helium’s revenue in June totaled $2.6 million. That’s down from the April high of $5.5 million but a 73% improvement over the same period a year earlier. In 2020, Helium’s June revenue was below $200,000. Eddy Lazzarin, the head of protocol design at a16z, noted that when his firm first invested in Helium, “the last ninety days had something like $600.” It has come a long way since then. > However, this is only part of the picture. Data Credits are used when onboarding a hotspot, asserting a location, and processing a payment. Onboarding hotspots, in particular, is intensive from a Data Credit perspective. Since Helium is onboarding so many new hotspots, this skews results, suggesting greater customer activity than is actually present. Data from The Decentralized Wireless Alliance removes these three uses, demonstrating the size of the Helium economy’s customer demand. By this measure, DC usage was just $6,561 in June. https://www.readthegeneralist.com/briefing/helium https://www.readthegeneralist.com/briefing/helium

oefrha 4y ago
Context for commenters who can’t be bothered the read the article: it’s not a hit piece, it’s actually a glowing praise of Helium: > Nova Labs’ Internet of Things network is one of crypto’s greatest achievements.

thunfischbrot 4y ago

LoRaWAN generally can use less energy than cellular networks, running off batteries for e.g. 7 years, where cellular would run out within 1-2. This is somewhat mitigated by NB-IoT, which was not available in most markets just two years ago. International LoRaWAN providers such as TheThingsIndustries and Helium can have advantages if you have a low, low data transmission interval and don't care about the (supposed) guarantees a traditional mobile carrier SLA would give you. On the other hand, since neither Helium not The Things Industries owns their gateways (run by the community) and operates in an unlicensed spectrum (much less likely to discover and fine those who disrupt communications due to negligence or even on purpose), one might opt to simply use TTN (even less promises on network quality than TheThingsIndustries) or NB-IoT. There are great use-cases for LoRaWAN, though Helium comes with more drawbacks than advantages for most.

Ekaros 4y ago
IoT is a real market. But I have no idea why anyone investing in probably rather big of a system wouldn't pick a reliable proven partner with support and guarantees that they can actually make it work.

boffinism 4y ago

> no source for the $6.5k/month revenue It's in a photo attached to the first tweet: https://readthegeneralist.com/briefing/helium https://readthegeneralist.com/briefing/helium > Data Credits are used when onboarding a hotspot, asserting a location, and processing a payment. Onboarding hotspots, in particular, is intensive from a Data Credit perspective. Since Helium is onboarding so many new hotspots, this skews results, suggesting greater customer activity than is actually present. Data from The Decentralized Wireless Alliance removes these three uses, demonstrating the size of the Helium economy’s customer demand. By this measure, DC usage was just $6,561 in June.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

andylynch 4y ago

This kind of technology is intended for sensor networks- think water meters, pipeline monitoring, EV chargers and the like. The problem I see with helium is much more of a commercial one; the big customers will need much better established network operators who can commit to operating such systems for decades. The money is there, but equally for customers investing in the wrong platform is risky too- eg this happened with the UK’s first generation smart meters, where many became ‘dumb’ again due to lack of interoperability between operators. It’s still being having at a cost of several tens of million of pounds. The solution which is also relevant to Helium by way of contrast was to set up a ‘Smart Data Communications Company’ as a regulated utility, and have that operate and develop the relevant networks. It generated around £430M in 2021 revenue as a non-profit. I can only guess Helium’s strategy is to subsidise it’s infrastructure until someone (really multiple someone’s) like ConEd can be convinced to use it but there are an awful lot of steps along the way I don’t understand their plan for.

michaelt 4y ago

> Which kind of devices are supposed to connect to Helium ? I suppose it is IoT devices, but most of them actually work perfectly fine with good old cellular networks You're right that there are some IoT applications where a cellular connection makes sense. If you need to know when a vending machine needs restocking, spending $5/month on a SIM card is good business. But some things have more marginal benefits. A city might like to know which streetlights are working and which aren't. If they can get that functionality for $5 per light with no ongoing costs, that's worth it. But if it's an ongoing $5/light/month? It's probably not worth that much - after all, they get fault reports from citizens for free. Whether Helium can support the latter use case usefully I have no idea. And it's not clear to me why they need a blockchain, or whether it's good business sense to target people too miserly to use a cellular connection. But there's certainly use cases out there for connections that are cheaper than cellular connections.