The Helium Network recently underwent a major upgrade migrating away from its native blockchain to the Solana blockchain. For several years, the network struggled with scalability and reliability issues that negatively impacted data transfer and proof-of-coverage (PoC) activity. This required significant resources from supporting organizations to maintain the blockchain, diverting attention from building data networks. However, with the migration to Solana, core developers no longer need to maintain the base layer blockchain, allowing them to focus on accelerating the development and usage of the wireless networks.
The move to Solana provides several advantages to the network, including:
- Improved network efficiency by moving PoC and data transfer to off-chain oracles, resulting in faster data processing.
- Access to Solana's infrastructure and DeFi ecosystem including wallets and DEXs.
- Access to smart contract functionality not available on Helium's previous blockchain.
- Access to Solana's developer ecosystem, which opens up Helium to a larger pool of developers who know Rust, rather than Erlang, the niche language of Helium's previous blockchain.
The Helium blockchain migration is one of the largest decentralized network transitions in history. Over 350,000 hotspots have migrated with limited issues reported. With Helium now on Solana, the network is better positioned to continue its mission of delivering a globally contiguous decentralized wireless network.
Source: Messari