Helium introduces Light Hotspots as “the evolution of how LoRaWAN gateways will interact with the Helium Blockchain”. Since the start of the Helium Blockchain, basically each Hotspot has been running a full node. As the blockchain grows, this increases the load over hotspots. This brought problems to hotspots as the higher compute requirements was causing some devices to fall out of sync.
Current Helium hotspots are doing everything – create challenges for other hotspots, beacon, witness and storing a copy of the entire blockchain. And of course, they also provide coverage and data transfer for the IoT devices that are using the Helium network. That’s a lot of work, especially considering the fast rate of growth that Helium is experiencing.
As the Helium Blockchain grows, it takes up more resources on the Hotspots and slows them down. As a result, the entire blockchain also is not operating as efficiently as it should. This is why last year Validators were introduced to the Helium infrastructure. They take care of the majority of the blockchain work so that hotspots doesn’t have to worry about that.
This aims to simplify the Helium architecture and everyone can have their role and focus on it instead on several different tasks. Light Hotspots won’t store a copy of the Blockchain and thus won’t need to go through the sync process. They don’t create challenges and will not take part in Consensus Groups. This will all be done by Validators, via which Light Hotspots can participate in PoC beacons, witnesses.
What do I have to do?
Nothing, really. The conversion to Light Hotspots is done automatically via a software update. It’s free and doesn’t require any action from hotspot owners. All you have to do is make sure your hotspot is turned on and connected to the internet. The update process is agreed with hotspot manufacturers and they will send the update to the devices automatically.
Even if you have ordered a Helium hotspot and it’s still shipping to you, don’t worry. They will automatically download the needed updates as you connect it to the internet. The rest of the process about setting it up will be the same.
The work for migration of the network and blockchain will also be done by the support organizations and Helium. Hotspot owners don’t have to worry about possible issues as there are fallbacks built-in in case there are some problems.
How does it affect me directly?
The first main question of hotspot owners would be if their HNT earnings will be impacted by the change. Yes, but that impact should be a positive one in the long run.
Initially there may be some slight changes as the Helium Network settles into the new configuration. But if your hotspot is experiencing issues right now or it was relayed, then the software upgrade should bring you more positives faster.
All Light Hotspots will net a slight decrease because they will no longer perform Challenging Beaconers. This is about 0.9% of HNT emitted per epoch, so the change won’t be felt much. In fact, it should be offset by the improves overall process which is expected to bring “much more stable and consistent” earnings, the Helium blog notes.
Of course, if your antenna position and overall hotspot location isn’t optimal, then the software update won’t change much. But if you have everything dialed-in properly, then over the long run you should experience at least a slight improvement in your HNT earnings.
Another benefit is that Light Hotspots will use much less bandwidth. Currently, they have to process all transactions of the blockchain and that traffic can be in the tens of gigabytes per month. A Light Hotspot should use less than 200MB per month depending on other factors, but in any case it won’t get anywhere near the massive current values. This is just the data used for the network processes and not the data which can/will be transferred by the devices actually using the hotspot.
The introduction of Light Hotspots doesn’t mean that hotspots as a concept are going away. They will still take part in the Proof-of-Coverage process and will get the 60.1% of total HNT minted per epoch.
If you have a “lonewolf” hotspot, then your earnings might suffer. A lonewolf hotspot is one which is alone and there are no other hotspots to witness beacons. As such they won’t be able to create challenges and the only way they can mine HNT will become via transferring data. This should be another motivation for people to expand their local Helium networks and increase hotspots and coverage. Thus they will be able to earn more HNT and will increase Helium’s service coverage and capacity
