Internet of things in Russian. Radio Mining, Helium Approach

After reading my last article, where there was a phrase about mining radio broadcasts , people bombarded me with questions. And what about mining? And where is the money? They hinted that I should be in a madhouse. It may be so, but there are guys - helium.com, whom few dare to laugh at.

Surprisingly few mentions of these guys can be found on the Russian Internet. This despite the fact that they are preparing a revolution not only in the Internet of Things, but also in general. Here, in the remnants of the brain, the phrase of the Lefthander pops up that "the British do not clean their guns with a brick."

Here is their website , here is their memorandum outlining everything in English. I don't know much about cryptocurrencies. Therefore, I wanted to screw this topic and listen to smart people. Perhaps something will reach me.

As I understand it, Helium wants to build a decentralized radio access network . Now the networks are being built by operators, they are dictating prices. Helium wants everyone to be able to establish an access point and sell the service of receiving and transmitting messages directly to the consumer. Well, or almost directly, through them, because they also need to somehow earn.

Their motto on the main page reads: Down with the Opsos, give the people's telecom! In a lyrical digression, they, throwing a stone in the garden of ordinary miners, talk aboutsinfulpractice, when energy is spent only for money. In contrast, they offerrighteously Mine radio with the goal of reducing the cost of communication services, which is useful for humanity.

To achieve complete, true decentralization of the network, they came up with two concepts: proof of coverage and proof of location. The description of the receipt of this evidence occupies a significant part of their memorandum. Unfortunately, I do not have the ability to study in detail the mathematics of this evidence. I have to believe the authors and focus on the meaning of the concept in terms of radio access.

Helium offer their own method of radio access and at the first stage even their own pieces of iron for this method. They promise in the future full open source. It already exists on the network part of the system - https://github.com/helium . The creation of its own method of radio access, apparently, is due to the need for a secure implementation of procedures for evidence of coverage and location. At the moment, there is no description of radio access, although it can be understood from the chips used that it will be similar to UNB.

Particularly described is the counteraction to attacks on the system. This is natural, when it comes to money, the system must be secure.

Well, of course, there is a blockchain in which all network events are preserved for centuries.

Where is the money here? The owners of the terminal devices or organizations servicing them pay for the delivery of messages and for positioning , the owners of the access points receive tokens (I confess, I did not understand this point, explain why ?!) and for the delivery of messages through their access points and for positioning the terminal devices with their use. Owners of access points and terminals can even bargain for the price, as the message can be delivered through different access points. This micro-auction, as I understand it, is precisely designed to reduce the price of message delivery and move mobile operators from the Internet of Things .

I hope that I woke readers' interest in the topic. I look forward to a lively discussion. The topic, of course, requires more in-depth consideration, but let's start small.

Despite the fact that the concept seems impeccable, I myself do not really like it in terms of radio access. Information about the protocol has not yet been published, but it seems to me that the overhead of evidence will be hefty. Apparently the guys are more from the world of cryptography than from the world of radio.

As one ambiguous man said: we will go the other way!

This is a previous article on the topic of mining radio broadcasts. Everything about the radio is there.