POC Mining

Everyone who's dabbled in the crypto-sphere knows something, or has at least heard about Proof Of Work (POW) and Proof Of Stake (POS) mining. Today's post is a short introduction to, and my personal experience with Proof Of Coverage (POC) mining, after having installed three Helium miners three months ago.

_{source: Helium Explorer}

When I got started with crypto-currencies in 2017, I didn't really have the money to actually buy any. But I did have a PC with two reasonably fast graphics-cards, so I read some posts and articles about mining. It was such a nice revelation to learn that one can earn crypto-currencies by joining a network of validators, adding calculation power with your own graphics cards, and get started with accumulating the new decentralized money. I used NiceHash miner back then, mining Ethereum which was then converted automatically in Bitcoin. I did this for some months, but then the cost of electricity started to overshadow the income from mining with the POW algorithms. I started mining Ethereum again since February this year, but that's a joint venture with a friend I have who rents out houses with solar-panels, and we use 6 high end graphics cards now. Since my partner paid for all the hardware, I get 10 percent of the pie, for which I only have to check if the mining rig is functioning correctly or if the graphics cards start overheating.

However, since news broke that Ethereum will switch from Proof Of Work to a Proof Of Stake work algorithm, I've been on the lookout for something else to mine, and this is when I learned about the Helium network, or "The People's Network," as they like to call it. To quickly explain what this is, I'll just quote directly from their website:

Helium is a global, distributed network of Hotspots that create public, long-range wireless coverage for LoRaWAN-enabled IoT devices. Hotspots produce and are compensated in HNT, the native cryptocurrency of the Helium blockchain. The Helium blockchain is a new, open source, public blockchain created entirely to incentivize the creation of physical, decentralized wireless networks. Today, the Helium blockchain, and its hundreds of thousands of Hotspots, provide access to the largest LoRaWAN Network in the world.
_{source: Helium}

The Helium Network is a wireless network, and its success is based on the amount of reliable coverage it can create for users and businesses who use, rent out or sell IoT devices. Companies traditionally use the existing cellular networks, 4G and 5G, for connectivity and payments, and Helium offers them a much cheaper alternative with their network that's powered by miners who install a hotspot in their home. The Proof Of Coverage incentivizes miners to place their hotspots in locations that are beneficial to the network coverage; if hotspots are too close to each other (< 300 meter), the rewards are reduced, and when a hotspot is out of range of any other hotspot, there are almost no rewards at all. With this incentive, Helium hopes to create a grid of hotspots that yields solid coverage in populated areas.

The Proof Of Coverage algorithm basically guards the integrity of the network: "the Helium blockchain uses a novel work algorithm called “Proof of Coverage” (PoC) to verify that Hotspots are located where they claim. Put another way, PoC tries to verify, on an ongoing basis, that Hotspots are honestly representing their location and the wireless network coverage they are creating from that location." And it works as advertised! At the time of writing there are 319,037 hotspots online world wide, in 147 countries and 26,148 cities. In my town, in The Netherlands, there are enough hotspots to cover the entire city.

I've ordered three hotspots and placed them with friends and family who live in a better location than myself, three months ago. The three devices cost me, including shipping and international taxes, $1680. Today I cashed out for the first time, and I'm already $100 in profit. I cashed out to get my investment back, and from now on everything mined will be pure profit, that's some $500 per month with three hotspots in reasonably good locations. I say "reasonably" because my hotspots are all on the ground floor, and they perform much better if the antenna is placed higher above the ground. What about the electricity costs, you ask. Well, they are negligible; one miner consumes 5 - 10 watt. That's a whole lot better than the almost 1000 watt used by the Ethereum mining rig! Some caveats though. If you live in an area where there are no other miners, you'll need at least three of them, placed within each other's range but not too close to each other, to make any kind of money. Also, the price of one Helium token (HNT) now stands around $50, but what you'll earn depends on that price of course. Since the network is still growing at a rapid pace (when I ordered my miners there were only around 100,000 miners), I expect that price to go up even further before the next bear market sets in.

Here's the biggest caveat of them all: I had to wait three months for my hotspots to arrive, and I think waiting times have gone up. Some of my friends already had to wait 4 to 5 months. We all ordered from Bobcat, since it's the one that's shipped fastest and most reliable; it's from the same company that's also involved in the production of Xbox consoles. Oh, and the "OG" Helium miner shown in the first video isn't available anymore. Also, the earnings in HNT shown in the videos are a lot higher than what you'd expect now: the first halving has occurred this year (there's a halving every two years with Helium), and there are a LOT more miners now that have to share the fixed monthly rewards among themselves. The HNT price on the other hand has gone up considerably since that video was made. In any case, if you decide to order a miner, it's best to start at the Helium homepage and use the links from there.

By the way: this is not financial advice! Although me and 5 of my friends, who all live in the same city, have very good experiences with mining Helium, you do have to do some research and you need a good location to place your miner. You can see the Helium coverage map right here; as you can see, America, Europe and China have by far the most hotspots and, consequently, the best coverage and earnings. I've included some videos for you if you think this is something you'd like to get started with. And if you think you're too late, keep an eye out on Helium just the same: they're planning to expand their network into a people powered 5G cellular network service as well.

Thanks so much for visiting my blog and reading my posts dear reader, I appreciate that a lot :-) If you like my content, please consider leaving a comment, upvote or resteem. I'll be back here tomorrow and sincerely hope you'll join me. Until then, stay safe, stay healthy!

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