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Yes, two of them. First, RF bandwidth is a shared resource. One may credibly complain about the FCC’s allocation of bandwidth, but the big cellular networks w
by amluto 4y ago
Yes, two of them.
First, RF bandwidth is a shared resource. One may credibly complain about the FCC’s allocation of bandwidth, but the big cellular networks work well because they are centrally managed. If every tall building had ten antennas operated by competing token miners, then they would probably have incentives to deliberate interfere with each other, and they would have little incentive to cooperate. The overall results would be much worse than what we have today.
2. Decentralized blockchains are inefficient. Helium would work every bit as well as it does today (hah) if the payments were centrally managed. Of course, it would be more to regulators and law enforcement, which might be a good thing.
- blacksmith_tb 4y agoI don't think the primary issues are technical (LoRA is packet-based, so there'd need to more than 10 antennas near each other to cause headaches), they're financial. Even if we grant the basic premise that it would be useful to have LoRA coverage all over the place, the operator of the network needs to actually have customers who will pay to use it, and pay enough to cover then paying the people hosting nodes. I think you're right that Helium's blockchain/crypto angle is more about avoiding oversight / taxes / liability than it is any sort of fundamental requirement of getting lots of people to sign up to join building out coverage.