Onboarding for Third-Party Hotspots

With the community approval of new third-party manufacturers alongside the existing third-party manufacturer, RAKwireless, the Helium team is excited to make changes to the way that Hotspots are onboarded to the Network.

As we formalize the process to bring on new HIP 19 approved manufacturers, the Helium team is transitioning responsibility of the onboarding server to the Decentralized Wireless Alliance (DeWi) and publishing documentation on how it interacts with the Helium Blockchain. All actions made by onboarding wallets (at least one for each manufacturer) will be transparent and on chain.

We’re also reconciling decisions made at the genesis block around Data Credits used to onboard Hotspots and Miners and reimbursing the network for these costs.

DeWi Onboarding Server

The Helium team is transitioning responsibility of the onboarding server to the Decentralized Wireless Alliance. Documentation for this server will be available publicly on Helium docs, but access will be limited to HIP 19 approved manufacturers.

To date, the Helium team has operated a server with access to a single onboarding wallet. This address is one of two onboarding addresses as defined by a chain variable (the other being this alternate wallet with no Data Credits or HNT). This server and this chain variable were used to prevent any gateway from joining and flooding the network with virtual gateways. We’ve always acknowledged that this was something we’d like to fix in the future as consensus rules should be able to validate trustworthiness of gateway activity especially with respect to PoC rewards. Work continues on this and we still believe that the end goal should be permission-less onboarding of gateways with a DC fee.

We are moving to a multi-wallet onboarding server that has been open-sourced for everyone to review and gives access to specifically onboarded manufacturers. Initially, Helium, Inc and Cal-Chip Connected Devices will be the registered “Makers” that can onboard Hotspots. These Makers will be responsible for supplying sufficient Data Credits to onboard and assert Hotspots for all Hotspots that have been shipped but may not yet be onboarded on chain. This represents 2,461 and 5,817 Hotspots, respectively, as of January 20, 2021.

Reconciling Genesis Data Credits

One of the things that many Hotspot owners may not be aware of is that although Helium, Inc was “paying for” onboarding and asserting locations of Hotspots, these Data Credits were created at the genesis of the Helium blockchain in 10 accounts. These Data Credits were created at the time because the team had not yet implemented the process to burn HNT into Data Credits, which was released in August, 2020. These accounts, and their activity, are publicly visible on the Helium ledger (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).

Since then we’ve wanted to reimburse the network for the Data Credits used for onboarding. Helium, Inc. will be burning HNT into Data Credits, at the Oracle Price of the onboarding or assert location block(s) for all Helium Hotspots. For transactions that occurred prior to the first Oracle Price on block 366920, we will be using the first Oracle Price.

Similarly, Cal-Chip will be doing the same for all RAK Hotspot Miners. You can see in the table below what this will entail (as of January 20, 2021).

In total, this will take 572,231 HNT to burn into Data Credits and this HNT will be permanently taken out of supply. In addition, we will also be clearing all of these generated Data Credits and the remaining pre-mined Data Credits, out of supply.

We believe that, through these actions, we are making the network whole for all already onboarded Hotspots and RAK Hotspot Miners.

Timeline

Since this is a fairly intricate series of actions, we will be planning out each step.

Before Friday, January 22, 2021:

1. New onboarding accounts (one each for Helium, Inc and Cal-Chip Connected Devices) will be funded with sufficient Data Credits for manufactured but not yet onboarded Hotspots and RAK Hotspot Miners.
2. Execute a chain variable transaction to add these two accounts to the allowed list.

Before Monday, January 25, 2021:

1. Transition to new DeWi-managed Onboarding Server and migrate all data to start using new accounts.
2. The Helium Hotspot app will be updated to use the new Onboarding Server. This is contingent on App Store approval.

At this point, all new onboarded Hotspots and RAK Hotspot Miners will be using the funded Data Credits.

Sometime in the next week:

1. Helium, Inc and Cal-Chip will reconcile the final HNT required and burn it into Data Credits into their respective new accounts.
2. Helium, Inc will consume all of these Data Credits and those in the pre-mined accounts to completely remove them from balances.

We look forward to welcoming new third-party manufacturers and continuing to grow the Network together!