According to angel investor Liron Shapira, the decentralized wireless internet protocol Helium (HNT) is making investors only $6,500 a month after hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in the company.
..@heliumis often cited as one of the best examples of Web3 use cases, with an investment of $365 million. @a16z..
Ordinary people are convinced to spend $250 million to buy hotspot nodes in hopes of earning passive income.
result? Helium’s total revenue is $6.5 million per month pic.twitter.com/PyW6KPllvc
— Liron Shapira (@liron) July 26, 2022
Helium return rate was low
In a Twitter thread on July 26, Shapira claimed that users who spent between $400 and $800 per month to purchase hotspot nodes complained of low earnings.
Instead of the expected $100 monthly revenue, users are getting about $20.
Shapira claimed that even the $20 return was due to “a temporary subsidy of $19.99 from investments in network growth and speculation about the value of the $HNT token.”
This means that your actual earnings are only $0.01 per month.
No end-user demands
Additionally, he claimed that Novalabs, the company behind Helium, is making $300 million (30 million HNT) annually from the network.
Meanwhile, according to Helium Network rules, $300 million ($30 million) $HNT) is sucked up annually by @novalabs_the company behind Helium.
This “earnings” on the books, mostly from retail speculators, probably justified such an aggressive investment. @a16z..
— Liron Shapira (@liron) July 26, 2022
According to Shapira, the Helium network has no end-user demand, so this revenue comes mainly from HNT token retail speculators.
In his opinion, this is the reason for the lack of revenue despite having over 500,000 hotspots. However, “the total lack of end-user demand for helium was not surprising.”
He added, “A basic LoRaWAN market analysis would have revealed this to be a bubble of speculation around a bogus and exaggerated use case.”
helium reaction
helium leadership Responded to Shapira’s allegations in a Twitter thread defending the network.
Amir Haleem Helium CEO said Nova Labs had only raised $250 million since its launch, “not for tokens in the network, but for equity in the company.”
Our good friend and web3 enthusiast @liron I wrote this thread under critique @helium It has gained some traction.Here are some points I wanted to address
— amir.hnt (🎈,🫡) (@amirhaleem) July 26, 2022
He also touched on revenue claims, stating that Helium makes $2 million each month from registration fees.
So why are we only paying $6,500 worth of data? Unlike cellular networks, there are no millions of existing devices to switch to. @helium..The best applications haven’t been built yet and will take months or years to build
— amir.hnt (🎈,🫡) (@amirhaleem) July 26, 2022
Hareem said the $6,500 in revenue comes from the 650 million monthly data packets sent over the network. He continued that the numbers are low because most of the devices and applications that can use it have not been built.
He also disagreed with the assertion that Helium services had no market demand. According to him, Helium is focused on his LoRaWAN and already has a waiting market.
He said the network has nearly 1 million nodes, covering 10% of the world’s population. The timeline is he is 5 to 10 years old and only after that can anyone consider his Helium to have failed.
Shapira repeats his claims
Shapira, on the other hand, Posted Opponents disputing the claim reiterated that helium was a failure waiting to happen.
..@heliumCEO of @amirhaleem and investors @Kyle Samani Reply to my thread about helium
They didn’t deny the shocking data I shared or explain why the project failed so badly.
But I appreciate your willingness to have an open Web3 discussion. I absolutely need it.https://t.co/owbnlEYw0R pic.twitter.com/px5Gp2Frs5
— Liron Shapira (@liron) July 27, 2022
According to him, the Helium team “built a Web3 bridge out of nowhere.”
Shapira also said Helium’s response to his thread “doesn’t deny the shocking data I shared, nor does it explain why the project failed so badly.” I was.
