Organization Name – Helium

Category – Services

About

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Helium built something before DePIN was a term. That is worth acknowledging: there is a first-mover credibility that compounds across a decade of hotspot deployment that later entrants cannot replicate by deploying a better tokenomics sheet. Since 2013, the protocol has put 421,000-plus Hotspots into the world, migrated to Solana for cost efficiency, and extended from LoRaWAN into Wi-Fi and mobile through partnerships with MetroPCS and AT&T.

Shawn Fanning — of Napster — co-founded this. Frank Mong is independently verified as CEO. These are not anonymous actors, and the founding… story carries cultural weight in a sector that frequently elevates anonymous teams to the same standing as named operators.

A $200,000 SEC settlement in 2025, involving disclosure questions about the nature of the Helium token, was resolved publicly and is documented in Helium’s own communications. Companies that disclose regulatory outcomes transparently are, counterintuitively, easier to evaluate than those with no such history — you have disclosure behavior to assess, not just claims. $HNT is listed on major exchanges. VBTS is 11.92 — 50th percentile. For DePIN context, see decentralized physical infrastructure networks. A decade-old network, a transparently disclosed SEC settlement, and a Napster co-founder is a more informative set of facts than a clean record attached to a team nobody has heard of. Read More