Decentralizing the Internet Via Blockchain

Recorded remotely, episode four of Hodl Up.

Hodl Up: Ever noticed how smart TVs used to be crazy expensive, whereas today you can pick one up for just a few hundred bucks? I was wondering what the reason was, and I read somewhere that one of the reasons is that in the past they couldn't collect data from users. With the new smart TVs they can get that data, whether you're using the remote's built-in mic to search for something or anything else. Everything you do on that TV is used, and they sell that data. That's why they've been able to lower TV prices.

Hodl Up: Did you fact-check this?

Hodl Up: Yes. And it's not just TVs. Think about any service you use daily and pay for, where you never stop to think whether it's actually worth that much. Take mobile carriers. I pay quite a lot of money every month just to have data and all the features these carriers promise you, and I never stop to think whether it's really worth it. And at the end of the day, where is all my usage being stored, and how is that information being used by those network providers?

Hodl Up: I read an article based on a study which found that when the weather is really good outside, there's no general outage in your area, and you still have bad internet, with packet loss, bad upload, good download, whatever, during a specific period of time, it could potentially be data leakage: people stealing data, hackers, cyberattacks. In a country like ours, which is really small and young and doesn't have much infrastructure for protecting your data, no one notices, right? To me that's fascinating, because I thought I was protected. I grew up with a phone, with technology, but I never looked at technology and data from this point of view. That's where new technologies like blockchain come in handy, specifically DePIN, which has been one of the most talked-about sectors of crypto in the last couple of years. DePIN stands for decentralized physical infrastructure network. The idea is that you use real-life infrastructure, people make valuable contributions to a specific network, and that's how it operates, so it's not controlled by a centralized authority. Think of logistics or supply chains. The people participating in that ecosystem aren't just consumers; they also contribute, and at the same time they benefit from whatever the network rewards them with.

Hodl Up: DePIN has been around for years. It was just never mainstream. I know projects from back in 2020, and no one was calling them DePIN projects.

Hodl Up: IoT, yeah. They always found other words. Then DePIN as a term started getting traction in 2024. We were at EthCC. We keep mentioning EthCC, guys, we love it, because we met people from the crypto industry we wouldn't have met otherwise. And everyone was talking about DePIN and AI. DePIN, AI, DePIN, AI. I'd heard about AI before EthCC, but I'd never heard of DePIN, although I'd done a lot of research on DePIN projects specifically: Filecoin, Helium Mobile...

Hodl Up: Helium, yes. And speaking of Helium and mobile carriers, today we have a very special guest joining us on Hodl Up: Frank Mong, the COO of Helium. You can probably guess from the balloons in the back; that's the official emoji they use. So let's hop on the call with Frank and see where this goes.

Hodl Up: Hello, hello, and welcome to Hodl Up, Frank. We're very excited to have you with us. This is our fourth episode, and the topic of the day is DePIN. We were going over some of the best DePIN projects on the market right now, and one of the best, especially when it comes to mobile carriers, is Helium. We wanted to discuss it with you. Could you share what Helium is about and give a brief introduction of yourself and the company?

Frank: Sure. Thank you for having me, guys, I really appreciate it. I'll start with myself very quickly. My name is Frank Mong, and I'm the chief operating officer of Helium Mobile. We're the team that originally founded the Helium protocol, which we open-sourced about seven years ago. My background is in cybersecurity: about 25 years of it before I entered the crypto space in 2017. When I joined Helium, we were about 11 people. Helium started in 2013, and at that point we were in the process of pivoting. The big problem Helium was trying to solve was how to connect Internet of Things devices. I know a lot of people don't know what that means, but they're little sensors: sensors that tell you the temperature, detect smoke and fire, or track your pets, like your dogs and cats. The key was using a very, very small amount of power and not using cellular: a different kind of signal that can transmit for miles. What we were trying to figure out was how to build a network to receive those signals and bring them over the internet back to the owner, on their phone or wherever, so they could track things they couldn't track before. That was the premise. Helium as a company tried to do that without crypto, as a traditional venture-backed startup, with roots in Silicon Valley.

Then in 2017, the big shift occurred. If you remember, 2017 was when Bitcoin and Ethereum became mainstream. You started seeing them on the news. Your aunts and uncles would ask, "Hey, have you heard of this thing called Bitcoin? What the heck?" Boomers were talking about it. That's when I'd say mass awareness was happening. Same for us: we're networking and wireless technology geeks, we heard about it, and we thought, hey, for this network we're trying to build globally, maybe if we put Bitcoin into hotspots, into access points, so people could mine Bitcoin, maybe they'd be willing to share their internet and receive these signals from miles away. That was the big idea. It turns out you can't use Bitcoin for that. So we went down the path of building our own blockchain, the Helium blockchain. It was an L1, and that's how this journey really began for Helium.

Hodl Up: Before we get deeper into the technical stuff: who came up with Gigi? I've seen her Twitter game and I love it. Who came up with Gigi, and why is she in our house right now?

Frank: Glad you have it, that's so cool. It's a very appropriate question, because it ties to our L1, back when we had our own blockchain. We don't anymore. We migrated to Solana about three years ago, which I think a lot of folks in the Solana community know. Before we migrated, on our own L1, we did a lot of work similar to other proof-of-something L1s. We required something called proof of coverage, because we were building a decentralized network. We wanted to make sure that these hotspots, which were dispersed and owned by individuals, could trust each other, talk to each other and prove it. So we had a whole consensus group and a whole proof-of-coverage model on our own L1. Every 30 minutes you could be elected into the consensus group, and you wanted to be elected, because you wanted to keep proving to the network that you were real. When you did that, you also earned and mined a disproportionate amount of HNT, the Helium Network Token, the crypto you'd get for sharing your internet. So that part was almost like a lottery every 30 minutes. When we migrated to Solana, which works very differently, the proof-of-coverage mechanism completely changed, and that went away. Then I was brainstorming with a few folks on our team: the person who runs our marketing, Emily Murray, and the person running our subscriber business, Coco Tang. Somewhere in those conversations, a group of us thought: what if we could emulate proof of coverage and the consensus group elections, which were essentially like winning a lottery every 30 minutes? That's just an analogy. What if, instead of using true consensus mechanisms, we did a truly random selection, and used Gigi as the prize? Gigi, this plushie goose. You've got to put her next to your mic.

Hodl Up: There you go.

Frank: Gigi the plushie goose, or duck. We used her as the prize. I forget what the intervals were, but everyone with our cell phone plan who turned on location sharing had a chance to win Gigi. And what they'd win isn't just a plushie. They'd actually win an NFT of Gigi, and that NFT represented a disproportionate amount of crypto tokens for that subscriber. So we turned it into a game, essentially a promotion. But again, it was really born out of the old days of our consensus elections.

Hodl Up: Having a mascot, like most big projects do, is a really good initiative for bringing the community together. Which brings me to my next point, since you mentioned the transition to Solana. How did the community receive it? What was the biggest feedback you got about switching from your own blockchain to Solana?

Frank: I think it was very thoughtfully done, and the process involved the community. I should mention that because Helium open-sourced the blockchain, the hotspot hardware and all the protocol primitives we created, it's all on GitHub. If anyone's interested, just search GitHub and Helium and you'll find it. We had to be thoughtful because over time we built a massive community. On Discord it was about 200,000 people. I don't know what it is these days, but it certainly peaked around 2021 or 2022. So many people were involved. First, we really wanted to articulate our problem: running a blockchain, an L1, is incredibly difficult. When we first built the Helium L1, we never thought we'd get to a million hotspots around the world. We never dreamed we could. We built a chain that might support 10,000 hotspots. When you're a startup trying something, you have no clue. You just try it and see what works. We got very lucky: it turned out this thing worked, and it blew up to a million. The issue was that we hadn't planned for that. Our blockchain was actually running on each hotspot. I think we were probably the most distributed blockchain in the world, more distributed than Ethereum, because we had hundreds of thousands of nodes supporting the network. We had to move to a validator model because the chain got so big and so hard to manage. That was the problem. Our dev team at launch was probably 11 to 15 people, and those same 15 people had to support a chain running on a million hotspots. Can you imagine that?

Hodl Up: Sorry to interrupt, if I may. In our neighboring countries, and even in ours, in southeastern Europe, we have Helium hotspots. I don't know about now, but two or three years ago I knew people running Helium nodes, and to me it was amazing, because we're a small country using this innovative technology. I'm not that technical, but just thinking about how you could scale to that degree amazes me.

Frank: We were all surprised, to be transparent. You can see the map on-chain at world.helium.com, I think, so if anyone's curious, take a look. It's pretty amazing. The problem was that we couldn't support it with 15 devs. It was just too hard. We wrote the blockchain code in Erlang, which isn't a widely used language. It was great for networking speed and performance, but not great for community support and contributions. So the code itself made it hard for anyone else in the community to help us. I shouldn't say no one did; some people in the community helped us quite a bit, but it wasn't enough for a million nodes. We really had to solve that problem. The team, led by Abhay Kumar at the time, went on a journey of evaluating different L1s. For context, when we started down this path in 2017, Toly and Raj at Solana were beginning their journey in parallel. I think they started around 2016, but their chain wasn't ready; they were still in the early stages of development. When we looked for a chain back then, nothing could really do what we wanted in 2017. But by 2021-2022, Solana's chain had evolved massively, which was very promising for us, since we knew the guys at Solana. We also looked at a multitude of other chains, Polygon and certainly Ethereum and its derivatives, but there were lots of issues: speed and cost. Gas fees on Ethereum are just ridiculous, and no other chain had Solana's speed. So we looked at three or four chains and put it to a community vote, through a process called Helium Improvement Proposals, or HIPs, which really drove us to migrate to Solana. That's the TL;DR. We met a team co-founded by Noah, and Noah and his team did an amazing job of helping us migrate. Again, that was probably a dev team of four or five people in total, between our Helium blockchain team and Noah's team. Not many people, and they did an incredible job migrating us in a short amount of time.

Hodl Up: And most projects that migrate don't keep the same momentum afterwards, but you're the exception in this case. I love builders, and that's why I love Helium. Another question: now that you've migrated to Solana, are you planning to grow beyond the Americas? I saw some moves into Mexico, and I think South America. What about Europe, or anywhere else overseas?

Frank: Definitely. The only restricting factor for expanding parts of the Helium network globally, the cellular components we want to expand, has been that cellular airwaves are highly regulated and proprietary, for folks who don't know. What does that mean? The government of each country regulates cellular bandwidth, the airwaves, and companies have to buy rights to operate on them. It's called licensed spectrum. Every country has licensed spectrum, and everyone's cell phone typically uses it to connect to the internet, especially when you're not at home or in the office on Wi-Fi. So we've been trying a few things. One is building a business selling a cell phone plan directly to consumers in the United States. That's a learning process for us; we've never done it before. Second, we're developing technology that can essentially replace cell towers by putting cell towers in people's homes, safely. We're not talking about crazy cancer-causing airwaves; these are safe, proven, open-sourced airwaves. How do you build that network into everyone's home and business across the United States? We're learning from that. The third piece is: how do we bypass spectrum, the government-controlled airwaves? Those are the three things we're trying to figure out, and you're starting to see some of it play out. Mexico is an example. Movistar Mexico is working with us, as you mentioned. It's owned by Telefónica, based in Spain, a massive telco conglomerate with cellular service all around the world, probably one of the biggest. After testing with us for about a year and a half, which took a while, they decided through Movistar Mexico to move 2.3 million subscribers onto the Helium network. That's amazing, right? In Mexico. That's one approach, and we're looking at multiple approaches to expanding globally. We may have another way. I don't want to set the wrong expectations, but we've tested and tried multiple paths, and we'll continue to. I'm always optimistic, so I feel we'll find a way to get to Europe, Eastern Europe and other parts of Asia, Southeast Asia and North Asia, as fast as we can. Obviously we want to be global. We don't want to be stuck or bound by traditional regulation or limitations that exist because governments want to make money on spectrum. That's why, right? And only big companies with a lot of money can afford it.

Hodl Up: It makes sense, especially in Europe, with MiCA and all the chaos around this new uniform regulation. A lot of people and companies are complaining that Europe is losing its potential to be a big player in the future of digital technologies. What I wanted to ask is about privacy, because, as we were discussing earlier, it feels like some people just don't care about privacy, especially in telecom. Even when I'm watching TV, I never think about the fact that the TV provider is probably getting data from me and selling it somewhere. How do you make sure people internalize the idea that privacy is very important, and how does that lead to the mass adoption everyone in crypto wants?

Frank: First of all, I'm really torn on whether consumers care. Not us sitting here; I think we probably care a lot about privacy. But look at your relatives and friends who are on social media constantly: they've been trained not to even think about privacy. They don't realize that the phone they use, the phone plan they're on and the apps they use are all tracking them, blatantly. And not just that: they take that tracked information and sell it, monetize it, make money. And you, the person, are the product. The three of us and everyone else in the world are a product that Apple, Google, Netflix, Facebook, TikTok and hundreds more use. So the question in my head is: do people really care about privacy? I think a few do, and the vast majority don't, because they just don't know. They're not even aware. I think the industry I mentioned did a really good job of training a whole generation not to care, because they're addicted to the content. It is what it is. It's not good or bad; it's just how life is and how we've evolved. So what we've decided, as a phone plan and a crypto-powered company engaging with consumers, is this. One, we won't sell your information. We just won't do it. We won't advertise to try to make money. What we are doing is asking users to opt in: you choose to share your location with us, and if you do, you earn rewards. We earn crypto for you sharing your location; that's part of how our blockchain works. We use that crypto to pay for your phone plan, and to pay for the rewards system, so you can redeem things like Starbucks, shoes from Nike or toys from Lego. Those are things consumers can touch, eat and feel. The crypto value is just built in. You don't have to ask what crypto is good for; you don't really need to care at the end of the day. Crypto is just another piece of technology, and we're going to make sure you see its value in a free phone plan, a free McDonald's burger, a free Nike t-shirt, all powered by crypto. That's what we're trying to achieve, all without selling your information. That's the key. I think that's a change in mindset, and you can reach people and teach them the importance of privacy if you show them the benefits and value, just as other companies trained them to give away their privacy for free by getting them addicted to content. We have to do the opposite. That's the mission and the movement we're trying to create, and it has multiple facets. It's bringing immediate value to everyone, powered by crypto, in a way they understand, like a free phone plan or a free Nike t-shirt. It's also teaching them that they can own their own cell tower. They don't have to buy service from a big central telco in their country; they can do it themselves. There's a DIY approach that pays you in crypto. Again, only certain people will be attracted to that: entrepreneurs, somewhat technical people, hustlers, and certainly crypto people get it. But those are the pieces we're layering together so everyone gets it. We need everybody, all seven billion people in the world. If we achieve that, we change the economics of an entire industry worth, I don't know, $9 trillion or something like that. It's a huge market.

Hodl Up: I agree the main issue is onboarding people who see crypto only as an investment, because they don't understand the technology. Personally, if I go deep enough, I won't understand it either, but I do see its potential. Onboarding normies, seven billion people, that's the main issue. About the Cloud Points you mentioned: are there plans to expand these benefits? You mentioned many companies, Nike and others. Are there plans to expand the range?

Frank: Certainly. Today we're working with a portfolio of pretty normal goods and services, like I mentioned: toys, shoes, food. Your basic needs. Beyond that, you're right, we should offer more. For example, I'm working in the background on partnerships with phone makers, so over time you can use Cloud Points to buy a new phone. That's an example of additional value powered by crypto. And perhaps other privacy-oriented services, like VPNs and encryption. A lot of vendors have done great jobs creating consumer-friendly privacy tools, and I think we should put them on our platform, because it relates to what we're pushing for, which is independence. It's all about privacy and monetizing yourself. You should earn your piece of the pie. So those are the things we're looking at. Again, we don't want to get too technical, because we want to appeal to everyone, not just a few. It's a balance between technical privacy value, which VPN software offers, and there are so many great vendors for that, and a free phone, which everyone would love. Those are the things we're playing with.

Hodl Up: What about gaming? I'm a gamer myself, and I know there's an intersection between gamers and crypto people, if I may say so. Have you thought about incentives where you can get a console, games, or benefits in certain games through partnerships and Cloud Points?

Frank: For sure. If we're talking PS5s or Fortnite or something like that, 100%. I'd love to do that. That's the dream. If somehow Helium were in Fortnite, that'd be so cool.

Hodl Up: Since you mentioned the challenge of mass appeal: what do people tend to misunderstand about Helium? What's one myth you'd like to bust and clarify, something that maybe went viral but wasn't the case?

Frank: I think we have one thing going against us, and unfortunately it's crypto. The way the crypto industry has evolved involved a lot of good and a lot of bad, and those things keep piling up. If you're a normie, it's very confusing; you already don't know what crypto is. And unfortunately, for the last four years the trend has been to highlight only the bad things about crypto. Certainly in the United States, that came from our government, which is unfortunate. It's been a horrible four years. Things have completely changed with a new administration that's very pro-crypto, but the last four years of anti-crypto sentiment didn't help anybody in crypto, including Helium. Just a lot of bad news, and the weaponization of the government and different enforcement agencies. It was almost creating a culture and mindset that crypto is a scam, that no one is doing anything good, that it isn't useful and is only used to scam people. I think that's flat-out wrong. Those things do exist. But for the older folks watching this: remember the beginning of the internet? Lots of scams. No different. Just as many scams, if not more, came with the adoption of the internet. With any massive technology change or movement, you'll see it, with crypto and with AI. Scams always come in, because there's always opportunity when companies are still figuring things out. Scammers look for arbitrage and take advantage of it. It's unfortunate, and I hate it, but in every technology revolution I've been part of over the last 30 years in the tech industry, I've seen it again and again, especially through my cybersecurity lens. It continues today, by the way. Email scams haven't stopped, and email has been around for what, 30 years? It's nuts. So I hate it, but crypto really has to clean itself up. No one will do it for us. What we have to do at Helium is keep proving and validating. For us, that means proving value to normies very quickly, making sure they trust and support what we do and see its value: the free phone plan, Cloud Points, all of that. But we also need validation from massive enterprises, and that's the bridge we're building with the telcos. Even though we're trying to disrupt their entire industry, we're leveraging them too, because they've established themselves over the last 150 years. They're known entities. Everyone knows Movistar in Mexico, Telefónica in Spain, T-Mobile in the United States. These are known brands, and we've purposely partnered with them and associated our brand with theirs so that we're not an anomaly. We're not scamming. If an old industry that has done lots of validation and has lots of social proof says, "Yeah, we're going to use Helium as well," that means something. You can believe all the negative press and rhetoric around crypto, but Helium could certainly be doing something good and real. That's what we have to keep proving.

Hodl Up: I don't know if you've heard of the book There's No Such Thing as Crypto Crime, by Nick Furneaux, I think, if I'm pronouncing it correctly. He basically says exactly this: every industry has crime. Crypto is a tool for criminals just like cash is. Crypto doesn't make scamming easier; it's just the technology they're using today, because people aren't really familiar with crypto yet, so when normies come in, they're easier targets. Back in 2020, when I joined the market seriously and started trading and trying all these new apps, I got scammed left and right, but I didn't blame crypto. I blamed myself for not doing my research. To wrap everything up: do you think we're finally back? The market pumped about 2% in the past few days. What do you think about the current market, and where is it going?

Frank: This is probably the fourth cycle I've been through, ups and downs. I kind of feel like we're in a crypto winter. I don't think we're in crypto summer right now. But I also think it's due to external factors. Crypto isn't immune to the macroeconomic situation in the world. Whether you're a crypto investor, a real estate investor or an equities investor, the one thing in common is that investors hate volatility. A good index I look at is the VIX, which measures volatility in equities markets. Indexes that track volatility also take into account politics and world trade, the fundamentals. When you have, at least in the United States, a president who is very aggressive on world trade and trying to do things differently, you create a ton of volatility. The prediction models have no idea what's going to happen, because it's not the status quo. If it were the status quo, you'd keep running the models and could roughly figure out what's going to happen, and that's when you start to build momentum and see runs, whether bull markets in equities, real estate or crypto. I think it's all related. Right now we're dealing with a ton of volatility, and none of the models work because the president of the United States is super unpredictable. That creates fear and uncertainty in everyone, and when you have that, everything stops. The economy stops growing because everyone's thinking, "What's going to happen? I shouldn't do this, I shouldn't invest, I shouldn't buy. Let me wait and see." When you're in wait-and-see mode, everything tanks, because demand goes down. I'm not an economist, and I don't really know how to invest. I just know I've been through this four times now in the last seven or eight years, and I'm not worried or panicking. Maybe because I'm numb to it now, a little bit dead inside. But I'm still optimistic. I still feel innovation will always win, and it will play out. I have huge faith in crypto. I think over time this will be how transactions happen, with Helium's HNT as the currency for all the data that flows through the internet. Ultimately, what I think we can add to history and to humanity is empowering everyone to own their own path to the internet and be paid for it, rather than paying somebody else and being the product.

Hodl Up: As we said at the beginning, we also believe in Helium's potential. And going back to the market, we've also become immune to news. World War III could start and it wouldn't affect us; we'd still believe in the tech. Thank you so much, Frank. We don't want to take any more of your time. We really appreciate you hopping on and sharing such insightful thoughts, and we hope we can meet again.

Frank: Thank you, guys. I appreciate the opportunity, and best of luck to both of you. Starting any venture, whether it's a podcast or a tech company, is always difficult, so I really respect and applaud you for giving this a try, because you never know unless you try. It's a great example of entrepreneurship. Take a look at these guys: give it a try, just go do it. You never know.

Hodl Up: Exactly. Thank you, Frank. Have a good day.

Hodl Up: Well, that was interesting.

Hodl Up: I loved it, and I love that he was honest about where he thinks the crypto market stands right now. He said we're in a crypto winter, and many people are saying the same. It makes sense, because Trump recently didn't rule out the possibility of a recession in the US, and you know what a US recession means for all markets. But one interesting fact I'd like to mention: whenever the US announces a recession, the worst is usually already over. There are about four to six months of struggle in the markets after the announcement, and then it's up only. And we still have six months before November. All my hopes are on November right now, because April is here and there's no time to go parabolic right now. Summer is always dead, in my opinion. But let's not talk about price performance. Helium: real builders.

Hodl Up: Real builders. I love that. Seven years of building, many challenges. You heard him: about 10 developers. That's what I like about the DePIN sector in general. It has a big community feel, full of builders, and a lot to be excited about. Personally, I think DePIN is here to stay. AI as well, but AI is a bit oversaturated compared to DePIN.

Hodl Up: Thank you very much to you as well. We want to thank Frank again, and we'll see you in the next episode, which will be about something you'll never guess, because we have to research a bit what's going on in the market. Have a good day.