Amir Haleem - CEO, Nova Labs & Founder, Helium Ep #71

Amir Haleem (CEO, Nova Labs & Founder, Helium) talks with Austin about the Helium story and the current proposal to move Helium to the Solana blockchain.

0:00 - Introduction

1:05 - Origins of the Helium network

5:24 - Early challenges for Helium

7:19 - Helium’s unique growth and economic models compared to other blockchains

11:35 - The geo-specificity of Helium’s rewards

14:18 - Why Helium started on its own L1 

16:55 - Current disadvantages of Helium running on its own L1 

20:46 - Why the time is right for a Helium migration

24:28 - Why Solana is the best scaling solution for Helium

28:56 - Composability as parts of the Helium network move off chain

30:57 - Solana’s role in supporting amazing applications

32:12 - How a migration will help Helium reclaim its internal engineering power

34:36 - How the upcoming vote will impact Helium validators and hotspot operators

36:27 - How Helium’s migration will open up the Solana ecosystem to its community

37:36 - Recent developments in cellular networks

41:59 - How long will Helium’s migration onto Solana take, and what will it entail?

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Austin: I'm Austin. This is the Solana podcast. Today, we're talking with Amir Haleem, the founder of the Helium network and CEO of Nova Labs. Helium since its beginning has operated its own layer 1 blockchain, but in a process set forward several months ago, and which has sort of come to a community governance vote in HIP 70, the network is actually proposing switching from operating its own layer 1 to operating on another layer 1. Uh, in the details of HIP 70, the core developers and core contributors are recommending a move to the Solana blockchain as the new home for the Helium network. So we're gonna talk a bit about that today, some of the history of Helium, and how the network, uh, sets itself apart from other blockchains, uh, which is pretty interesting because it's based much more heavily on real world usage and physical hardware, as opposed to simply a software abstraction layer. So, Amir, welcome to the Solana Podcast. 

 

Amir: Hi, thanks for having me. 

Austin: Great to have you here. Um, so let's kind of start at the level set here. Um, where did the original idea for Helium come from? 

Amir: So Helium has been around as a company, uh, for a little while and we, uh, we always intended to try and build, really, a sensor network, that was the original intention, right? It's like, if you wanted to build a big, broad wireless network designed for sensors, you know, how, how would you do it? . Like, it, it felt clear to us that cellular wasn't goi