The communication protocol of the Helium Network has set March 27 as the date of migration to the Solana blockchain and the deployment of Oracles, seeking to increase scalability and reliability.
According to a February 17th blog post, a 24-hour transition period will take place on March 27th, during which Helium’s current blockchain will cease. Proof of Coverage activities and data transfers will remain unaffected. A community volunteer working group was formed to oversee the migration process. The Helium team stated:
“This upgrade will cover all wallets, Hotspots, and Helium Network states, and will take place during a 24-hour transition starting at approximately 1500 UTC / 10:00 AM ET.”
attention!
The Helium Network is officially moving to @solana on March 27th! Are you ready?
Make sure you’ve switched to the Helium Wallet app for a smooth transition. Keep Hotspot active and online to receive IOT tokens.More in this thread https://t.co/rzk2xcBEJ0
– Helium (@helium) February 17, 2023
Once the chain stops, validators will stop generating blocks and transactions will not be synced. The final image of the blockchain will be taken after the migration of all accounts and tokens to the Solana blockchain, and Hotspot will be printed as nonfungible tokens (NFTs), noted the team.
“Note that any rewards generated by Proof-of-Coverage activities in the previous 24 hours will be available for claim in the Helium Wallet after the transition period. Oracles will update claimable balances, and Hotspot Owners will be able to use the new claim function. .”
HNT and MOBILE token holders do not need to take action to participate in the upgrade. The same applies to the majority of Hotspot owners, although owners of large fleets may test certain claim functions or develop custom wallet solutions.
The move to Solana was enabled by the community passing HIP-70 with more than 80% approval on September 22. At the time, the developers highlighted the benefits of the migration will include more original tokens available for the subDAO reward pool, better mining, as well as more reliable data transfer and ecosystem support.
Also in September last year, the creator of Helium Nova Labs announced an agreement with the American telecommunications provider T-Mobile to launch a crypto-powered mobile service that allows customers to earn crypto rewards for sharing data on the quality of coverage and helping to identify the location of Helium dead points nationwide.