GKIIN Vol 1 Issue 2

Crit­i­cal news for indus­try pro­fes­sion­als and investors in the space. This is sec­tioned into News, Oppor­tu­ni­ties, Issues, and Unknowns.

NEWS

HELIUM

• MCC Video — Due to Light Hotspot sched­ul­ing, the MCC has paused hard­ware audits for the month of Octo­ber. I’d think of this as a “stan­dard delay”.
• MCC — Video 19:46 All 5G gate­ways will need to incor­po­rate “secure boot”, and a new HIP 19 audit process spe­cif­ic to 5G units will be put in place.
• MCC — Video 22:05 Gate­way-less discussion
  
• Bor­ing Pro­to­col has sub­mit­ted a HIP to become a sub­DAO. If approved, this would be the first “real” exter­nal sub­DAO in the Heli­um ecosystem.
• We’re see­ing lots of “need an installer?” or “are you an installer?” call outs across mfrs/distros (Heli­umDe­ploy, CalChip)

GEOD­net
GEOD­net is inno­vat­ing in the realm of blockchain + meat­space spa­tial incen­tives. Long the domain of Heli­um (HIP 15/17), GEOD­net is exper­i­ment­ing with at least 2 new options. This is impor­tant for the indus­try as it starts to pave the way for more projects to improve their loca­tion incen­tive structure.

• GEOD­net will start to enforce sig­nal strength penal­ties on rewards. Up until now, min­ers were reward­ed sole­ly for being con­nect­ed to the inter­net. This is the first in a series of refine­ments of sig­nal data. Expect the next penal­ties to revolve around anten­na move­ment (1mm or less, “it should be strong enough to do a pull up on.”
• GEOD­net will also start to issue NFTs based on min­ers that have pro­vid­ed con­sis­tent data, with own­er­ship of the NFT allow­ing a reward lev­el in perpetuity.

Map­Met­rics
I received track­ing info for the SPT, or Spe­cial Posi­tion­Track­er. No pref­er­ence (that I know about) was giv­en for this ship­ping. This is a healthy indi­ca­tion for Map­Met­rics; they’re ship­ping prod­uct. They’re also using NFTs to sell adver­tis­ing, which could be an inter­est­ing channel.

XNET
XNET launched as a new play­er in the “tele­com cow­boy” space. Max and oth­ers found crit­i­cal flaws quick­ly, which the XNET team has worked rapid­ly to rem­e­dy. XNET will have their first AMA on Thurs­day the 6th at 5 pm PDT in their Discord.

XNET is very com­mit­ted to their gate­way. In order for their pro­gram to work, they have to have one gate­way-to-one-radio. If you’d like to set up a meet­ing to dis­cuss fur­ther, we made a con­nec­tion at WIS­Palooza in Las Vegas.

OPPORTUNITIES

HELIUM

The MCC is look­ing for new mem­bers, both vot­ing and non-vot­ing. Inter­est­ed par­ties, includ­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers or dis­trib­u­tors who may sit as non-vot­ing mem­bers may apply here.

Cur­rent 5G mod­els are attached to an “AGW” (gate­way). The gate­way is what is onboard­ed onto the blockchain, not the radio. There is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to allow a man­u­fac­tur­er (or oth­er par­ty) to onboard an AGW sep­a­rate­ly from the radio and be respon­si­ble for (and prof­it from) man­ag­ing the gate­way in the cloud. Cur­rent dis­cus­sion is open­ing up ques­tions about who gets to onboard an AGW, who gets the rewards, how they might be split, and how the sys­tem might be managed. 

Going to gate­way-less opens up the pos­si­bil­i­ty to do WiFi6 offload­ing of 5G, which means ven­dors could make a WiFi6 radio with a secure boot, open­ing up $MOBILE rewards to a glob­al audience.

ISSUES

Pycom, a Heli­um HIP-19 approved man­u­fac­tur­er, has been put “into admin­is­tra­tion”, the US equiv­a­lent of bank­rupt­cy in the UK. Any­one they owe mon­ey to is unlike­ly to get paid unless the com­pa­ny is sold. You can see this dis­cus­sion at 16:35 in the MCC call. 

UNKNOWN

Chris­t­ian from Pollen & Scott Kaplan from Nova were on a pan­el at WIS­Pa­palooza. Nova does not appear have a clear plan for 5G. Pollen seems like they have a much clear­er path to mass deployments.