Internet of things in Russian. Mining radio broadcast, Helium approach

After reading my last article, where there was a phrase about mining radio broadcasts , people threw questions at me. And here mining? And where is the money? Hinted that I should be in a madhouse. This may be so, but there are guys - helium.com, over whom few people dare to laugh.

Surprisingly few references to these guys can be found on the Russian Internet. This is despite the fact that they are preparing a revolution not only in the Internet of Things industry, but also in communication in general. Here the phrase Lefty emerges in the remains of the brain, that "the British do not clean shotguns with a brick."

Here is their website , here is their memorandum setting out everything in English. I do not really understand cryptocurrencies. Therefore, I wanted to screw up this topic and listen to smart people. Maybe something will come to me.

As I understand it, Helium want to build a decentralized radio access network . Now networks are built by operators, they dictate prices. Helium want everyone to install an access point and sell the service of receiving and transmitting messages directly to the consumer. Well, or almost directly, through them, because they also need to somehow earn.

Their motto on the main page reads: Down with the opsozs, give the people's telecom! In a lyrical digression, they, throwing a stone in the garden of ordinary miners, talk about sinful practice when energy is spent just for money. In contrast, they offer righteously mine radio broadcast with the goals of reducing the cost of communication services, which is useful for humanity.

To achieve a complete, true network decentralization, they came up with two concepts: proof of coverage and proof of location. The description of obtaining this evidence occupies a significant part of their memorandum. I, unfortunately, do not have the ability to study in detail the mathematics of this evidence. I have to believe the authors and focus on the meaning of the concept in terms of radio access.

Helium offer their own way of radio access and in the first stage even their own hardware for this method. They promise in the future full open source. It already exists on the network part of the system - https://github.com/helium . Creating your own radio access method seems to be due to the need to securely perform coverage and location proof procedures. At the moment, there is no description of the radio access, although it is clear from the used chips that it will be similar to UNB.

Particularly described counteracting attacks on the system. This is natural, when it comes to money, the system must be secure.

And of course there is a blockchain, in which all the events of the network are stored for centuries.

Where is the money here? The owners of the end devices or their service organizations pay for delivering messages and for positioning , owners of access points get for tokens (I confess, I did not understand this moment, explain why ?!) and for delivering messages through their access points and for positioning the end devices with their use. Owners of access points and terminals can even bargain for the price, as the message can be delivered through different access points. This micro-auction, as I understand it, is precisely designed to reduce the price of delivering messages and move cellular operators from the Internet of Things market .

I hope that I woke the interest of readers to the topic. I hope for a lively discussion. The topic, of course, requires a deeper consideration, but let's start small.

Although the concept seems flawless, I myself do not really like it in terms of radio access. Information on the protocol has not yet been published, but it seems to me that the overhead of proof will be fair. Apparently the guys are more from the world of cryptography than from the world of radio.

As one ambiguous person said: we will go the other way!

This is the previous article on the mining radio broadcast. There's all about the radio.