- Verified dollar demand3 vs 2
- Operator disclosure quality4 vs 3
Helium
#2 overall across 7 scored depin networks. 23 points behind #1 GEODNET. Scored 57 on the published 41–99 scale under methodology 2026.09.15, from the evidence read in August 2026.
Why Helium ranks #2
Each strength is read from evidence on a 0–10 ladder and weighted as the published methodology states. The 32 objective points these produce (10.1 here) sit inside the score; availability, friction, trust record and measured data add the rest.
Each line is the ranking run again with one of Helium’s criterion scores changed and every other value held: the smallest whole-point change on that criterion that moves its rank, and where the re-run puts it. Up to 4 climbs and 3 falls are listed, smallest change first. Nothing here is a forecast.
Where it leads
- Reward integrity and liquidity — 4/10
- Operator disclosure quality — 4/10
Where it trails
- Helium's headline usage revenue and the DefiLlama figure measure different things, and the gap is roughly 5x by DefiLlama's own account — treat any Helium revenue number you are quoted as unverified until you know whether it prices Data Credits at the $0.50/GB protocol peg or at what carriers actually pay. Note also that the pause of buybacks on 2026-01-02 does not mean subscriber revenue stopped; it means it stopped being independently measurable, which is a different and in some ways worse problem for a buyer.
- Corrected during verification: SUBSTANCE CORRECT, QUOTE IS NOT VERBATIM AND IT IS NOT A BANNER. The protocol's hallmarks field is null; this text is the adapter's Fees methodology field. Actual wording: 'We do not count the HNT burned to mint Data Credits for network usage: it is priced at the $0.50/GB protocol peg while carriers actually pay ~$0.10/GB (HIP-149), and that HNT comes from Coinbase treasury wallets rather than open-market buys, so it is neither real revenue nor a genuine buy-and-burn.' Note 'Coinbase treasury wallets' (specific), and the clause 'making it an inflated usage metric that can't be confirmed on-chain' does not appear in the source.
- Corrected during verification: CADENCE IS WRONG — the denylist is refreshed roughly WEEKLY, not monthly. GitHub releases API shows 2026-05-28, 2026-06-02, 2026-06-10, 2026-06-24 and 2026-07-01. (Every other detail confirmed exactly: tag 2026063001, published 2026-07-01T17:49:00Z, filter.bin 39,301,658 bytes; downloads now 249,573, up from the 249,218 cited, consistent with a monotonic counter.) Read again 15 September 2026: no denylist release has followed 2026-07-01 (tag 2026063001 is still the latest), so the weekly cadence has stopped; filter.bin downloads now 534,332.
Where Helium leads and where it trails
Rank on every objective dimension among the rows scored on it. A criterion in the top third of its pool is listed as a lead, the bottom third as a trail; the middle is neither. Popularity, size and commercial terms are not dimensions.
- Verified dollar demand#3 / 7
- Payback at today's token price#2 / 7
- Reward integrity and liquidity#2 / 7
- Operator disclosure quality#2 / 7
The 3 nearest rows by score
Nearest by published score in either direction. Each card states the criteria on which the two rows differ and the cost difference under the same scenario inputs; the compare arithmetic below shows why the higher one ranks higher.
- Verified dollar demand3 vs 2
- Payback at today's token price2 vs 1
- Reward integrity and liquidity4 vs 2
- Verified dollar demand3 vs 2
- Payback at today's token price2 vs 1
- Reward integrity and liquidity4 vs 2
Why GEODNET ranks above Helium
The compare workspace's arithmetic applied to these two rows. Each dimension's share of the gap is its weight × the difference, on the displayed scale — it reproduces the displayed gap of 23.0 to within rounding.
Find out if Helium fits you
The rank above is the published one — the same for every visitor. Answer the category's questions and this section shows where Helium lands for you, which criteria your answers weight up, and which stated needs the record does or does not meet. The published rank stays beside it.
- 3–5 questions
- No account required
- Ranking-blind: no commercial input
- Personalised in under 60 seconds
Helium is not priced for this scenario
Metered usage beyond whatever the plan includes, for a year. Excludes egress, support tiers and enterprise minimums. Change an input and every figure recomputes from the published rate; the published rank does not move.
Rate read from the provider’s published pricing ↗ on 15 Sept 2026.
7 of 7 rows in the pool have no verified rate for this scenario and are absent from the median, not counted as free.
Evidence read 5 Aug 2026
One row per published criterion: the page each strength was read from, its source type by domain, the reading date and whether the file and the published table agree. Open a row for the quote and the receipt.
What the record publishes
- Pricing
- helium.com lists Helium Mobile Hotspots at "Only $249" (Hotspot Indoor, helium.com/mobile/hotspotindoor) and "Only $499" (Hotspot Outdoor, helium.com/mobile/hotspotoutdoor), with no purchase link on either page, and says "Join over 358k active Hotspots." (helium.com/mobile); it publishes no subscriber count or revenue figure, and the homepage 'Data Transferred 24H' counter renders with no value (2026-09-15). Official emission schedule (docs.helium.com/tokens/hnt-token/): "7 August 1st, 2025 210,000,000 7,500,000" and "8 August 1st, 2026 217,500,000 7,500,000" (year, year start, HNT at year start, target HNT emission), against a max supply of "~223,000,000 HNT". Deployer pay rate per the 2026-09-04 HIP-150 post: "The pay rate is set by Nova Labs under HIP-143, and it is $0.10 per GB as of writing"; HIP-150 raises the deployer target minimum "from 50% to 80% of what payers paid for rewardable data" ("from $0.05 per GB to $0.08 per GB") and caps per-site multipliers at 5, with individual locations and multipliers "handled commercially by Nova Labs".Helium — official Hotspot Indoor page ↗ · 15 Sept 2026
- Prices published in
- USDHelium — official Hotspot Indoor page ↗ · 15 Sept 2026
- Licences held
- Not published
- Compliance level
- partial
- Regulatory note
- Not published
- Supported chains
- Multi-chain
- Markets served
- global
- Primary markets
- Not published
- Restricted markets
- Not published
- Operating limits
- Not published
- Availability note
- The Helium IoT (LoRaWAN) network is presented as global. Helium Mobile hotspots (listed on helium.com at $249 indoor and $499 outdoor, with no shipping countries stated and no purchase link on those pages) are promoted for U.S. carrier offload ('Helium is used by many major US carriers as an offload solution'); a Mexico page announces a Movistar partnership with 'Hotspots coming soon', and other countries get a waitlist ('Sign up for the waitlist and be the first to know where Helium will go live next').
No confirmed legal entity is on file for this record. Nothing is inferred from the brand name.
What the record carries
Changes to published ranks and scores are recorded in a ledger, but this page does not chart that record yet, so no score line is drawn: history begins with the current verified snapshot. Below it, the methodology versions whose changes applied to this category, newest first.
- 5 Aug 2026Current verified snapshot · methodology 2026.09.15Score 57, #2 of 7. 4 of 4 criteria scored. History starts here; earlier values are not interpolated.
- 16 Sept 2026
2026.09.15Dimension scores carry tenths, and eleven more categories are re-read from primary sources · platform-wide- changed Dimension scores resolve to tenths of a point (O-04b), and weightedTotal is rounded to six decimal places before the order is read. 518 published scores move across 107 categories that were not re-read; none of them moves by more than 4 points, and most move by 1.
- fixed 66 published scores change in the eleven re-read categories, against a verbatim source each. The largest moves are Reflexer RAI (−16), Beefy and Unrekt (−11), Aztec (−10) and Golem (+9) — all of them rows whose sources had moved since their last read.
- changed Published order moves in 38 of 119 categories and three #1s change: smart_contract_audits (Zellic → Certora) and travel_rule_compliance (Sumsub Travel Rule → CodeVASP) on the finer resolution, kyc_compliance (Veriff → Sumsub) on the re-read.
- added availabilitySource (O-04g): for a reader who states a country, a row whose availability in that country rests on a region tag its record gives no source for sorts below every sourced row. It is inert in every order published here, which states no country.
- 10 Sept 2026
2026.09.5The published review cadence is now one the work actually keeps · platform-wide- changed reviewCadenceDays 30 → 45 across all 119 category specs, and the two prose sites that quoted "the 30-day review cadence" in tokenised_bonds.
- changed check-review-cadence-is-kept ceiling 7 → 3, negative-tested: restoring a single 30-day promise over 49-day evidence takes it to 4 and fails the build.
- fixed Measured by regenerating rankings.json: no category changed order and no score moved, and the golden suite confirms it independently — across all 119 fixtures and 2,217 cases the only fields that differ are methodologyVersion and contentHash. A cadence is a claim about freshness, not an input to any ranking.
- 6 Sept 2026
2026.09.3The country gate reaches every country the questionnaire offers- changed The gate moved from scoreAvailability to collectProducts and reads assessCountry from the decision layer. It runs for all 60 questionnaire countries: the 27 mapped ones at country resolution, the other 33 at the wizard's region resolution (an EU member the table does not map is credited with an "eu" tag; Ukraine is not).
- changed Measured effect over every category by every questionnaire country (6,959 runs): 807 runs change, in 29 categories and 48 countries; 2,182 rows leave ranked lists and 73 runs change leader — none of them a published, no-answer ranking, which are untouched by construction. Survivors keep their relative order in every run.
- changed 19 further runs — bill_pay in 18 countries, crypto_card in New Zealand — now leave nothing eligible and show the pool for reference. Those rows had been ranked as recommendations with a "not confirmed" label; each is now labelled with its own verdict ("names Hungary as a restricted market", "lists its markets and your region is not among them") and the result says nothing is available rather than "limited availability".
- fixed A restriction sentence is now matched word-bounded ("Niger" no longer matches "Nigeria"; "US" matches "US persons", not "industrial"). Previously a substring test.
How this verdict was produced
- Methodology version
- 2026.09.15 · last platform-wide change 16 Sept 2026
- Data snapshot
- Evidence read 5 Aug 2026
- Last recalculated
- At page build from the published inputs — the same run every visitor sees.
- Published run
- runWizardEngine(depin_networks, defaults) · no visitor answers
- Receipt id
- depin_networks:helium_depin:2026.09.15:1a6bcd11d7a4
- Dimension scores resolve to tenths of a point (O-04b), and weightedTotal is rounded to six decimal places before the order is read. 518 published scores move across 107 categories that were not re-read; none of them moves by more than 4 points, and most move by 1.
- 66 published scores change in the eleven re-read categories, against a verbatim source each. The largest moves are Reflexer RAI (−16), Beefy and Unrekt (−11), Aztec (−10) and Golem (+9) — all of them rows whose sources had moved since their last read.
- Published order moves in 38 of 119 categories and three #1s change: smart_contract_audits (Zellic → Certora) and travel_rule_compliance (Sumsub Travel Rule → CodeVASP) on the finer resolution, kyc_compliance (Veriff → Sumsub) on the re-read.
Rankings, scores and Fit read no affiliate, payout, conversion or sponsorship data. This page's commercial note appears once, beside the outbound action, and is written by no component that scores.