All You Need to Know About Light Hotspots – Future Of Helium Mining.

The helium mining ecosystem has transitioned to a Light Hotspot model. This will be beneficial to all helium miners out there that are becoming underpowered with low memory and data storage space.

The big problem is many hotspots have only 32GB of storage space. As the helium blockchain has grown to just about fill an entire 32GB memory storage there is not enough room for the operating system and cache swap files.

As the blockchain network grows, each Hotspot running a full node has increasing load requirements and is starting to fall out of sync due to the higher compute requirements.

Rather than force people to upgrade their helium miner micro SD cards, light hotspots were introduced to make life simple again. All that will happen is an update will be pushed out from the manufacturers and it will convert regular hotspots to light hotspots overnight.

New Light Hotspots will be cheaper, and they will no longer need to fully sync to the blockchain, won’t have relay issues, or create challenges. Validators will take over this role via HIP 55.

As of 19/4/2023 the helium blockchain has transitioned to the Solana blockchain network. This makes the helium network faster and cheaper for transactions.

How will light hotspots be better?

Well for starters you won’t need to download the entire blockchain data and snapshots. This will save me in excess of 50GB of data downloaded a month for me at least. Maybe more for others that are continually downloading snapshots due to 32GB internal storage.

Relay problems will be a thing of the past. If you are having issues getting your hotspot port forward correctly or you are behind a CG-NAT you could be losing earnings. Light hotspots fix this so deploying a remote miner such as my solar-powered off-grid helium miner now becomes easy and cheap. You could possibly get away with a 20GB data-only mobile plan now.

Light Hotspots are the evolution of how LoRaWAN gateways will interact with the Helium / Solana blockchain. Hotspot’s consensus work has been moved off of physical Hotspots and onto Validators.

With Validators producing new blocks, processing data, and initiating PoC challenges, this would eliminate relayed status requirements. Syncing and snapshot issues will be a thing of the past as SD card problems tend to stem from extremely high usage. Learn which is the best Helium miner micro SD card for your hotspot and how to replace them.

How will HNT rewards be affected?

Most people will see no change in their HNT. But now rewards will be in the form of IOT tokens. Light hotspots will still process data, send beacons, and witness beacons. The only downside is that it will no longer challenge beaconers. As this only makes up 0.9% of HNT emitted per epoch most people won’t notice the small loss in earnings. Hopefully, it will be made up in more consistent earnings will fewer periods of no activity.

As more hotspots are coming online every day the fixed amount of HNT/IOT has to be shared between the 950000+ helium hotspots ( current at the time of writing) Most people will see a decrease in earnings every month. That is just the way this network reward operates.

With the load moving to validators, your hotspot will be more reliable and have fewer SD card errors. So hopefully higher rewards if you are currently having sync issues due to the large blockchain height.

So I don’t need to worry about being relayed?

Correct the new firmware is deployed being relayed will be a thing of the past. No more peer-to-peer communication over the network. All communication will be via the validators through the router’s outbound connection.

Once you are transitioned over to the light hotspot you can disable any port forwarding on your router or you can just leave it in place. I would disable it to be safer.

How can I increase my HNT/IOT earnings?

Start by having an external antenna mounted as high as you can go and connect it with a short length of LMR400 cable. Don’t forget the lightning arrestor.

Make sure you have a good line of sight to other hotspots in your area. If you have a mountain or a large building in the way your earnings will be lower.

A good quality ethernet cable should be connected to your helium miner to provide a reliable connection and prevent Wifi dropouts.

Make sure to be in an area that is not over-saturated with other hotspots in your hex.

A fast internet connection is required with a good data plan. HIP 83 makes it essential to have fast internet as only the 1st 14 witnesses will be rewarded. So fiber cable connection is the go.

Check out my helium miner installation guide for single and double-story houses.

Can a single solo lone wolf hotspot make any HNT/IOT?

A helium hotspot all out on its own unable to see another helium hotspot is going to have a hard time making HNT/IOT.

In the past, the only way these single hotspots were able to make HNT was by creating challenges of 0.9 rewards per epoch. Now that validators have taken over this role and the rewards a lone wolf hotspot can only make rewards via data or if another hotspot comes into range.

I would encourage if anyone wants to deploy a hotspot remotely that you do some homework first to see if you can reach another hotspot. Or you will need to deploy two hotspots to earn rewards via POC.

A single lone wolf solo helium miner is going to make 0 IOT without data packets or proof of coverage rewards.

Will light hotspots become cheaper?

In theory, light hotspots should become cheaper but not by much. At the moment there is a premium on most hotspots sold due to the supply and demand factor. Some people have waited over 10 months for a hotspot from various manufacturers like Bobcat and Nebra.

Hotspots should start to get cheaper due to fewer hardware requirements, slower processors, less memory, and smaller storage space.

I have yet to get my hands on a light hotspot and I won’t purchase another until I can get one fast and cheap. Guess the rest of the world may be thinking the same thing. We are getting closer every day to 1 million helium miners.

Helium AHR

A nice feature currently on the Helium Explorer is called the AHR. The AHR is the Annualized Hotspot Return for the indicated Hotspot. The AHR is estimated based on the Hotspot’s actual $HNT now $IOT $mobile earnings during the prior 30 days, using a 365-day calendar year and the present $HNT market price.
The AHR is calculated without considering additional expenses and taxes. Past performance does not guarantee future results.

This is a nice feature and should make users and future hotspot owners more informed about how long it will take to pay back their miners.

Many countries consider cryptocurrency mining a form of income. So it is best to track your mining and airdrop transactions. I use Koinly to track all my transactions in the Ledger Nano, and exchange transactions, as well as software wallets. Tax reports are made easy with just one click.

Will all Helium Miner hotspots be compatible with light hotspot firmware?

Yes, as long as the manufacturer has pushed out a firmware update your hotspot will be compatible. Even if you are still waiting for one in the post as soon as it arrives it will update to become a light hotspot.

For all new hotspot owners, I recommend plugging in the hotspot as soon as it arrives into an ethernet port and letting it update first for a few hours before trying to connect to it via Bluetooth. You want it to do all the updates first before your try and set its location and attach it to your wallet. The onboarding process will be smoother.

Will the light hotspot firmware fix my helium miner?

Maybe, maybe not. What the light hotspot firmware will do is stop you from having to download blockchain snapshots so often. This will give you are better sync status and shorter periods of inactivity. There are hundreds of reasons why your helium miner may be showing offline.

• No power to the hotspot.
• The Internet is down.
• Old firmware.
• Faulty antenna or cable.
• Blown lightning arrestor if fitted.
• Full micro SD card, replace it with the best micro SD card for helium miners.
• Faulty micro SD card.
• Unable to download or sync to the blockchain.
• Unable to download new firmware.
• Helium network down.
• Overheating hotspot.
• WiFi or Ethernet problem.
• The hotspot is not set up for location and antenna dbi.
• Moisture in the hotspot.
• Corrosion of the antenna connections.
• Unable to assert hotspot location.
• Spoofing or gaming the helium network. (Don’t do it)

Go through this mega Helium miner troubleshooting guide and see if some of the solutions and fixes sort out your helium miner being offline.

When will light hotspots become live?

Light hotspots are live now. There was been a lot of delays for various reasons.

Conclusion

Time will tell if the light hotspots will be a good thing for the helium network. I think it will be even though I have never had an issue with my Sensecaps.

It will make it more user-friendly for people who just want a plug-and-play helium miner without having to upgrade micro SD cards and mess with port forwarding settings.

Happy mining fellow men and women.