Announced earlier today, the Helium Core developer team made a proposal, named “HIP 70”.
The proposal aims to improve Helium’s blockchain operational efficiency. In order to achieve this goal, Helium developers proposed a transition from the Proof-of-Coverage and data transfers accountings to “Oracles”, a third-party service that connects smart contracts with the outside world.
The implementation of Oracles will look to simplify Helium Core’s system structure and allow the selection of a more scalable Layer 1.
Helium’s team of developers believes that Solana should be the Layer 1 of choice.
“Such a move would bring significant economies of scale through the vast range of composable Solana developer tools, features, and applications.” The team of developers wrote on a Medium post.
This bold transition means that Helium will migrate the entire Helium Network, including its tokens, governance, and economics onto the Solana blockchain.
Why Helium is Moving to Solana
The move’s main goal is to transition away from the Proof-of-Coverage algorithm to Oracles.
Proof-of-Coverage is a novel work algorithm called that verifies that Hotspots are located where they claim.
Moving to Oracles could enable Helium to have a more efficient ecosystem.
“Moving Proof-of-Coverage to Oracles will enable more beacon and witness activity,” Helium’s Developer team wrote. “Simplifying the transacting of receipts by using a more traditional large data pipeline to transfer receipts and associated rewards outside of chain block creation and processing.
Instead of Hotspots being told when to Challenge, they will do it on their own – automatically.”
Not Yet a Done Deal
Helium’s transition to Solana is not yet fully voted. As of right now, HIP 70 approval is still pending.
However, the vast majority of Helium’s development team has voted to approve the transition, and HIP 70 appears to be on its way to passing.
What is Helium?
Helium is described as an IoT blockchain network that connects wireless devices to the network by using nodes as hotspots.
Every time Hotspots send connection data over the network, they receive a reward in the form of the native token HNT.
The company offers an alternative to GPU mining, given that people can mine Helium native token (HNT) by using Hotspots, which is done via radio technology.
The Solana transition will look to alter the way HNT is mined, by automating the Hotspot process.
Hotspot Owners in all subDAOs will gain from the restoration of 6.85% of HNT emissions to the miner pool following the switch to Solana L1.
