It's official: Helium will be moving to the Solana blockchain (pending vote)

HIP 70 introduces this change along with other changes that move Proof of Coverage and data transfer accounting entirely off-chain.

This will unlock: - Hotspot beacons once per hour - Accurate accounting of DC usage (currently drastically undercounted) - An easy transition to Solana when the time comes

Most importantly, it will allow the network to fix the scaling woes which impact UX the most: Inconsistent PoC and data transfer. It's hard to convince hotspot hosts and potential customers to use the network when these things aren't rock solid.

As part of this change, validators will go away and the 6.85% of rewards they receive will go back to hotspots! Validators will have 2 weeks to unstake once the chain transition happens (likely months away). If they don't, their HNT will become veHNT w/ 6mo lockup.

There are a bunch of new oracles here, too, and it's proposed that Novalabs will run them on behalf of the Helium Foundation

w/ no rewards during the transition. After that, oracles will be decentralized and rewarded as specified in subDAO HIPs.