Helium

A Decentralized Wireless Network

The Internet of Things is an $800 billion industry, with over 8.4 billion connected devices and online spending is predicted to reach nearly $1.4 trillion by 2021 [1].

Most of these devices need to connect to the Internet to function. However,

current solutions such as cellular, WiFi, and Bluetooth are suboptimal: they are too expensive, too power hungry, or too limited in range.

The Helium network is a decentralized wireless network that enables devices anywhere in the world to wirelessly connect to the Internet and geolocate themselves without the need for power-hungry satellite location hardware or

expensive cellular plans. Powering the Helium network is a blockchain with a native protocol token incentivizing a two-sided marketplace between coverage providers and coverage consumers.

With the introduction of a blockchain, we inject decentralization into an industry currently controlled by monopolies. The result is that wireless network coverage becomes a commodity, fueled by competition, available

anywhere in the world, at a fraction of current costs.

Helium's secure and open-source primitives enable developers to build low-power, Internet-connected devices quickly and cost-effectively. The Helium network has a wide variety of applications across industries and is the first decentralized wireless network of its kind.

Introduction

The world is becoming decentralized. A multitude of platforms, technologies, and services are moving from centralized proprietary systems to ecentralized, open ones. Peer-to-peer networks such as Napster (created by Shawn Fanning) and BitTorrent paved the way for blockchain networks and crypto-currencies to be built.

Now Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other blockchain networks have shown the value of decentralized transaction ledgers. Existing Internet services such as file storage, identity verification, and the domain name system are being replaced by modern blockchain-based versions. While software-level decentralization has moved quickly, physical networks are taking longer

to affect. These networks are more complicated to decentralize as they often require specialized hardware to function.

The Helium network is a wide-area wireless networking system, a blockchain, and a protocol token. The blockchain runs on a new consensus protocol, called the Helium Consensus Protocol, and a new kind of proof, called Proof-of-Coverage.

The Miners who are providing wireless network coverage in a cryptographically verified physical location and time submit proofs to the Helium network, and the Miners submitting the best proofs are elected to an asynchronous byzantine fault tolerant consensus group at a fixed epoch.

The members of the consensus group receive encrypted transactions submitted by other Miners and forms them into blocks at an extremely high transaction rate.

In addition to the blockchain protocol, the Helium Wireless protocol, WHIP, provides a bi-directional data transfer system between wireless Devices and the Internet via a network of independent providers that does not rely on a single coordinator, where:

1. Devices pay to send & receive data to the Internet and geolocate themselves.

2. Miners earn tokens for providing network coverage.

3. Miners earn fees from transactions, and for validating the integrity of the Helium network.

Key Components

The Helium network is built around the following key components:

Proof-of-Coverage

Proof-of-Coverage presents a computationally inexpensive Proof-of-Coverage that allows Miners to prove they are providing wireless network coverage. It anchor said proofs using a Proof-of-Serialization that allows miners to prove they are accurately representing time relative to

others on the network in a cryptographically secure way.

WHIP

Helium Network demonstrates an entirely new purpose built blockchain network built to service WHIP and provide a system for authenticating and identifying devices, providing cryptographic guarantees of data transmission

and authenticity, offer transaction primitives designed around WHIP, and more.

Consensus Protocol

Helium Consensus Protocol presents a novel consensus protocol construction that creates a permissionless, high throughput, censor-resistant system by combining an asynchronous byzantine fault tolerant protocol with identities presented via Proof-of-Coverage.

Open Source

WHIP introduces a new open-source and standards-compliant wireless network protocol, called WHIP, designed for low power Devices over vast areas. This protocol is designed to run on existing commodity radio

chips available from dozens of manufacturers with no proprietary technologies or modulation schemes required.

Proof-of-Location

Proof-of-Location outlines a system for interpreting the physical geolocation of a Device using WHIP without the need for expensive and power-hungry satellite location hardware. Devices can make immutable, secure, and

verifiable claims about their location at a given moment in time which is recorded in the blockchain.

Decentralized Wireless Network (DWN)

DWN presents a decentralized wireless network (DWN) that provides wireless access to the Internet for Devices by way of multiple independent Miners and outlines the Helium network and WHIP specification by which participants in the Helium network should conform. Routers pay this network of Miners for sending data to and from the Internet, and Miners are rewarded with newly-minted tokens for providing network coverage and delivering Device data to the Internet.

Tracking Helium