Helium’s native blockchain halted as project shifts to Solana

Helium, an Internet of Things (IoT) project, is currently in the process of from its blockchain roots to Solana  — a blockchain network known for its speed and scalability.

According to an official announcement made on April 18th, the purpose of this major migration is to enhance the stability and scalability of the Helium network. The network is built on a decentralized network of IoT devices that offer connectivity for low-power, long-range wireless devices.

Helium’s ambitious move to Solana commenced yesterday at 4:00 PM UTC and is slated to finish within a day. To facilitate the migration, the native blockchain of Helium has been paused, and a snapshot of the network has been taken.

The Helium tokens (HNT) and MOBILE tokens will then be charted onto Solana’s blockchain, effectively transforming Helium’s native tokens into Solana-native tokens.

According to Helium’s official blog post, the migration to Solana is expected to bring significant improvements to the Helium Network, including increased speed, lower costs, and greater stability. In addition, the IoT platform plans to tap into the robust developer community and resources available on the Solana blockchain ecosystem.

Helium community reacts

The announcement of Helium’s migration from its native blockchain to Solana has been met with mixed reactions from the crypto community. While some expressed concern about the stability of the Solana network, others received the news with enthusiasm, with one user calling it a “smart move.”

Another user tweeted, “Solana isnt very stable. Don’t pretend like it is….”

The reputation for instability is not unwarranted — as Solana has faced frequent outages in the past — with the most recent outage occurring in November last year. In 2022, downtime became almost a monthly occurrence, leading to widespread criticism of the project.

Despite attempts to address the issue, Solana continued to face technical problems in 2023, with users experiencing difficulties completing transactions on the mainnet in February.

Back in September 2022, Helium Improvement Proposal 70 (HIP-70) was put to the vote to determine whether the project should migrate to Solana.

The proposal garnered significant support, with 81.41% of the votes in favor of the move. Of the 7,447 votes cast, 6,177 supported the migration, while 1,270 were against it.