Helium Data is Beautiful
There was a large celebration in the office last week when we started shipping Hotspots nationwide because every time a Hotspot comes online there’s more coverage, the network gets bigger, and we move closer to building the first global peer-to-peer wireless network.
We often get questions like “How many Hotspots have been deployed?”, “How big is the network?”, and “How many HNT will my Hotspot mine?”
These are important questions for those who want to participate in building the network, and for companies looking for an alternative to cellular for their Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity use cases.
Transparency was one of the main design goals when thinking about building this network and also aligns with releasing core technologies under friendly open source licensing.
So along with nationwide shipping, we released a few tools that directly answer the questions about and form the basis for ongoing network transparency.
How big is the network?
The Helium Network Visualization tool displays every Hotspot that’s been deployed as well as specific details for Challenges to verify the network, a real-time view of the consensus group, and the block explorer.
Hotspots across the US
The Hotspot Map provides a complete view of Hotspot deployment anywhere in the world, but currently show US Hotspots given our initial focus.
Each number represents a Hotspot that’s providing wireless coverage, and earning its owner Helium (HNT), the native cryptocurrency of the Helium blockchain.
Proof-of-coverage in action
The Challenges view shows Helium’s Proof-of-Coverage in action. Not only can you see the individual Challenge paths, but once the Challenge (a packet sent from one Hotspot to another over the Internet to verify coverage) has been received additional details including which Hotspots succeeded broadcasting the Challenge to other Hotspots, which failed, and which witnessed the activity. All of this is important because with Proof-of-Coverage, all “work” is not rewarded equally.
The Helium Consensus Model relies on Proof-of-Coverage to elect Hotspots to the consensus group to perform certain activities (verify transactions, add blocks to blockchain, etc) and earn additional tokens for that work. For more information about Proof-of-Coverage, go here.
For more information about how Hotspots earn tokens, visit here.
Consensus in real time
The Consensus view displays consensus group election in real time, with visual representations for key sharding and mining of blocks.
Based on the quality of coverage, Hotspots earn a score that is used to determine whether they are more likely to be elected to a given consensus group.
Hotspots elected to this group perform “work” including verifying network transactions, and adding new blocks to the blockchain. Hotspots in the consensus group earn more Helium for this additional work. See here for more info on token distribution.
To keep the process fair, new consensus group members are elected approximately every 30 blocks (with a new block being published every 1 to 2 minutes).
Immutable record
The Block Explorer provides a public record of every transaction that occurred on the Helium blockchain. This permanent record cannot be altered and can be leveraged as an audit trail for device connectivity.
How well are my Hotspots mining?
Hotspots earn Helium while providing wireless coverage.
The Helium Blockchain Dashboard allows anyone access to detailed data related to the blockchain and Hotspots, including individual Hotspot earnings.
In addition to selecting your Hotspot, you can choose the time range to view stats displayed on the dashboard.
Hotspot Earnings
From the dashboard, any Hotspot owner can choose Hotspot Earnings, and select their Hotspot.
This will provide not only the amount of Helium a Hotspot has earned over time, but also comparisons with others over time, and a record of the different ways the Hotspot has earned tokens, for example, becoming a consensus group member, issuing or receiving a Challenge, etc.
Hotspots
The total number of Hotspots, the selected Hotspot score, as well as the average score across the network is displayed from Hotspots section.
Only Hotspots that provide legitimate wireless coverage can earn a score, and based on this score are eligible to be elected to the consensus group. A Hotspot’s score is based on the quality of wireless coverage measured by a number of different variables including arrival time of the message, signal strength, and others.
The map on this dashboard shows Hotspots and locations, but also displays Hotspots according to their score which is represented by a color.
Blockchain
Looking for blockchain stats? The Blockchain section includes the current block height, current number of elections, and other stats related to blockchain including:
- Last Election Time: the duration a consensus group was together for.
- Last Block Time: the length of time to add a block to the blockchain.
- Last Gossiped Time: how long it takes for a block to be distributed to Hotspots on the network.
POCs
Proof-of-Coverage (POC) validates the quality of wireless network coverage Hotspots provide based on feedback by peers who continuously monitor each other.
In the POCs view on the dashboard, “Challenger” refers to Hotspots that initiate a Challenge (an “onion packet” which begins the Proof-of-Coverage process), and “Challengee” is the Hotspot that receives the Challenge, sends an acknowledgment, and forwards the Challenge onto other designated Challengees.
All POCs section displays requests, Challengers, receipts of those requests, how long it took, and the onion key of the packet that was sent.
A Challenge path is determined by the Challenger using data about Hotspots stored in their local copy of the blockchain.
The dashboard displays the number of Challenges sent/received and allows users to trace the path that Challenges took and whether or not a Challenge was successful.
Given the design of the system it is normal in the early days more Challenges will be sent than received and more failures than successes.
Challenge success (green) or failure (red) is displayed using colors along with the Challenge path.
The path of a Challenge for a selected Hotspot can be displayed both from a Challenger or Challengee perspective in the Single POC section.
Tokens
View the number of Helium (HNT) in circulation, and total balance of Helium for an account (a single account could have multiple Hotspots).
Keep on keepin’ on
The team spent a lot of time developing these tools and will continue to refine them.
We believe both Hotspot owners and users of the network will find them useful as we continue to build The People’s Network together.
