Helium (HNT)

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Historical price evolution of Helium

Daily historical data. Updated automatically.

Helium was founded in 2013 when Amir Haleem (former co-founder and CTO of Diversion Inc.), Shawn Fanning (co-founder of Napster) and Sean Carey founded Helium Inc. in San Francisco, with the objective of creating a low-cost decentralised wireless network for IoT devices leveraging LoRaWAN technology. Between 2015 and 2019, the company raised over 53 million USD in four funding rounds from GV (formerly Google Ventures), Andreessen Horowitz, Multicoin Capital and Pantera Capital, amongst others. In 2017, with scarce funds, the company pivoted towards a cryptocurrency incentive model for individuals to deploy and operate the network's hotspots.

In July 2019, Helium's mainnet was launched with the HNT token and the first LoRaWAN hotspots, implementing the Proof of Coverage (PoC) consensus mechanism that validates the actual coverage of hotspots and distributes rewards in HNT. In August 2020, the Data Credits (DC) token was launched, pegged to the USD, to pay for data transmission on the network. During 2021, the network grew to over 25,000 active hotspots and HNT reached its all-time high of approximately 55 USD in November.

In January 2022, the community approved HIPs 51, 52 and 53, converting Helium into a "network of networks" with subDAOs for IoT and Mobile, and the new IOT and MOBILE tokens. In March 2022, Nova Labs (formerly Helium Inc.) raised 200 million USD in its largest round to date, bringing the cumulative total to over 360 million USD. In August 2022, the community approved HIP-70 to migrate the network from its own blockchain to Solana, although in July press reports alleged that Helium had falsely claimed to have Lime and Salesforce as clients, accusations that Nova Labs disputed. During 2022, Nova Labs also acquired FreedomFi, an open source tools company for decentralised 5G networks with CBRS spectrum.

On 18th April 2023, Helium completed the migration to Solana, moving from approximately 10 TPS on its own blockchain to over 1,600 TPS. HNT, IOT and MOBILE began being issued natively on Solana, and hotspots were minted as compressed NFTs at a cost approximately 1,000 times lower than traditional NFTs. On 18th June 2024, the Carrier Offload programme was launched, allowing telecommunications operators to use the Helium network to provide coverage to their users, with initial agreements with T-Mobile and Movistar. By 2024, the network operated with over 350,000 hotspots in 80 countries, and in Q4 2024 transferred 576 TB of data, an increase of 555% compared to the previous quarter.

In April 2025, an agreement with AT&T was announced to automatically connect its customers to over 62,000 Helium hotspots in the United States. In Q3 2025, Helium Mobile surpassed 461,500 subscribers, a growth of 300% year-on-year, whilst the Data Credits burn rate reached 361,000 USD monthly. In August 2025, HNT's third halving took place, adjusting the token's emissions. Finally, in November 2025, governance approved HIP-13, which consolidated the migration of MOBILE and IOT tokens towards HNT as the ecosystem's main token, whilst Coinbase suspended MOBILE trading due to the token's depreciation.

Helium operates as a decentralised wireless network that runs on the Solana blockchain since April 2023, structured in two specialised subnets: Helium IoT uses LoRaWAN technology for low-power, long-range devices, whilst Helium Mobile provides 5G and WiFi connectivity. The ecosystem employs three interconnected tokens: HNT acts as the main token with a maximum supply of 223 million units distributed through biennial halvings, whilst IOT and MOBILE are the specific tokens for each subnet that can be redeemed for HNT through treasury swap contracts whose rate is determined algorithmically according to each subnet's utility score.

Hotspot operators obtain rewards in their respective subnet's tokens through two main mechanisms: Proof of Coverage (PoC), which cryptographically validates that the hotspot provides real coverage at its location through signed beacons and verification by neighbouring hotspots, and data transfer rewards, which are generated when real devices use the hotspot to transmit information. End users, such as IoT companies or telecommunications operators, acquire Data Credits (DC) by burning HNT tokens at a fixed rate of 0.00001 USD per DC, creating a deflationary mechanism known as "burn-and-mint" that directly links HNT's value with real demand for network usage. The ecosystem's governance is exercised through veHNT, time-locked HNT tokens that grant voting power proportional to both the amount and duration of the lock in the main Helium DAO and in the IoT and Mobile subDAOs.

Data verified against external sources. Some values may have changed since the last update.