[lozaning]

The helium company charges miner manufacturing partners $40 a unit in order to generate the required private keys for their miners to be able to join the network.

As soon as I found out I couldn't stand up my own DIY helium miner and start providing coverage and making money I became entirely disinterested.

[delabay]

With DIY they couldn't insure the security of participants. The temptation is too hight to create 100s of cloud miners.

That said, there are 50 HW manufacturers queued up to supply. Incorporating Helium into an existing Lora framework is very easy.

In fact, Helium is seeing an interesting phenomena where the PoC mining tech is becoming bundled with existing HW platforms because the material costs are so cheap. Projects are now bootstrapping on top of Helium.

[lozaning]

Then it sure sounds like what they have is a proof of private keys algo, and not a proof of coverage algo. In which case why bother with a blockchain at all if there's a singular central entity that is the arbiter of all trust?

[wyager]

> With DIY they couldn't insure the security of participants. The temptation is too hight to create 100s of cloud miners.

Indeed, that’s why helium is DINO (decentralized in name only).

[syedkarim]

I think the issue is with the $40 fee. Why not $1, or $5?

[humancyborg_]

the $40 is burned on-chain, it never comes to the company. it’s just a cheap form of spam control

[delabay]

spam control and token demand. crypto places a huge value on large public burns.