Helium community votes to switch to Solana

The Helium community behind the IoT project has voted overwhelmingly in favor of moving the blockchain infrastructure to Solana.

The Helium community has voted overwhelmingly in favor of moving the blockchain infrastructure to Solana.

The Helium community behind the IoT project has voted overwhelmingly in favor of moving the blockchain infrastructure to Solana. A full 81 percent of voters in the community voted for the HIP 70 proposal (Helium Improvement Proposal 70).

To move this forward, a two-thirds majority was required. Helium tokens (HNT) from holders would need to be staked according to their choice for the on-chain vote.

With the change, large parts of the Helium blockchain will migrate to Solana, including the token, the governance structure, and the proof-of-coverage consensus mechanism. A new version of the Helium Wallet app will also be available on Solana. The developers behind Helium hope this will increase the protocol's scalability and interoperability.

"Solana has in the past proven to lead some of the most important decentralized initiatives and was for us an obvious choice," says COO of the Helium Foundation, Scott Sigel, in a statement.

The Solana blockchain is gaining popularity for its high transaction speeds. That speed comes at a price, though. The network frequently goes down. Technically, the project's mainnet is still in beta and can't be considered a finished product yet.