[gazzini]

I think the Helium project is a fascinating experiment, and I’ve had a lot of fun participating in it. I’ve been tracking my experience for a while (with pictures): [0]

It’s certainly a weird project, and watching the corporation contort itself into something coordinated enough to drive partnerships like this but decentralized enough to qualify as a cryptocurrency is a sight to behold.

The governance of this project isn’t “decentralized” in any strict sense of the word, but the separation of the dewi alliance from the main corporate entity is interesting.

The self-imposed technical constraints are equally fun to observe. The scaling issues (gossiping blockchain data across 100k+ raspberry pi devices with no broker) are insane, and the incentive mechanism for “validators” is an interesting incremental solution. Specifically, people ”stake” $200k on cheap cloud servers, which might earn money for a few hrs a week when elected to a “consensus group.” This made sense historically (on distributed raspberry pi devices) but is now really strange compared to most other blockchains where validators earn consistently.

Every one of these issues is a bottomless pit of learning opportunities as worlds collide (economics, telecom incentives, cryptocurrency price swings, hobbyist antennas, etc…).

I’m no maximalist (I’ve sold lots of coins), but there is something deeply fun about watching _anybody_ try to do something novel to compete against the old guard. That’s why I was up at 6am today to fiddle with an antenna on a friend’s roof.

0: https://gazzini.com/projects/posts/helium/