Technical FAQ roundup: June

June saw a big jump in our Telegram community, which means more interest and more questions. Thanks to community members who are curious about our technology and asked thoughtful questions. Keep them coming.

To help with planning and gauge interest, in June we announced the Helium Gateway presale interest form you can find here.

An expanded community prompted a number of questions specifically about the gateway and mining so without further ado this month’s technical faq:

How do I earn tokens with gateways?

There are two ways to earn tokens: 1) by mining 2) from machines. In simple terms gateway operators (miners) earn tokens for providing network coverage (mining), and machine users pay gateway operators for sending their data to and from the internet.

To mine tokens do gateways have to be in the same location as machines that use the coverage?

No. A gateway that isn’t anywhere near machines will still be able to mine, provided it has other gateways within range to help validate it’s providing legitimate wireless coverage.

Do you need to have multiple gateways in a location to earn tokens?

Gateways earn tokens through mining (requires other gateways within range) and from machines sending data to the internet (requires machines connecting to gateways and sending data). So even if there is only a single gateway in a location, it still can earn tokens from connecting machines, however the probability that it will be chosen to mine tokens is practically non-existent.

What will influence the rate of mining?

Assuming your gateway is submitting valid proofs of coverage, the main considerations are your score and the number of other gateways on the network. Score is influenced by the gateway being able to prove it exists and is providing coverage based on responding to challenges by neighboring gateways.

If you have a faster internet connection, can you mine faster? If not, how can you increase the speed of mining?

A faster internet connection does not impact mining speed, but you will have a better chance of earning tokens for sending and receiving data to machines that use the network.

The goal is to build a wide area of wireless network coverage and the incentives are aligned accordingly. So the only way to increase the “speed” of mining is to operate more gateways that are distributed geographically vs. having a bunch in one location which won’t help.

If I buy Helium Gateway, how much Helium token can we expect to earn?

Good question. The details of this will follow anything we release about our own token.

Is it worth it to purchase multiple gateways?

If you have access to more locations, you should buy as many as you think you can put in those places. For example home, office, friends houses, etc. The good news is that you won’t be losing out on mining to big pools or warehouses full of ASICs.

It has been stated that upon deploying a gateway, you will also need to stake tokens. Is this amount already decided upon?

The staking amounts have not been decided. Stay tuned.

Can I mine Helium tokens without buying a gateway? Is the gateway software or hardware?

The Gateway is a piece of hardware which creates miles of internet coverage in the sub-GHz space. Also, it runs a peer-to-peer network and blockchain.

Gateways are required for mining/token generation, but gateway schematics will be completely open and use non-proprietary components/modulations etc, so no license fees etc. Eventually, because it’s open, you can imagine all sorts of manufacturers and brands making their own Helium-compatible gateways. We’re just creating the first to jumpstart network.

Is it possible to mine other non-Helium cryptocurrencies via the Helium Gateway?

We’re building our own physical blockchain and Helium Gateways only mine Helium tokens. This is the same cryptocurrency machines will use when paying gateways for connectivity.

Is Helium leveraging extra power of IoT devices connected to the network for mining?

No. Machines are devices that use the network that gateways create, but don’t impact mining. Gateways are the miners and form a peer-to-peer network between them. We say mining is fairer on Helium since every validated gateway has an equal opportunity to be selected to mine within the consensus group.

Do you guys have a prototype for your gateway?

We have working hardware in our SF office for the new gateway and module and will soon have a testnet online. (You can see our current generation hardware — which is in production with 1000s of developers and companies, but won’t be part of the mining operations and new network — here.