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ChainChoice verdict

Helium

DePIN NetworksEntity not verifiedCountry not set

#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.

Find my best
Availability not verified. Tell the explorer where you are and this verdict tests the record’s published market tags against it. An untested record is shown as not verified — never as available. Supported markets on record: Global. Set your country in the explorer
Why this rank

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.

4 published criteria · Σ weight 100
CriterionWeightStrength · 0–10ScoreContrib.MedianBestRankEvidence
353+3.362.08#3/7Third party
252+1.601.05#2/7Primary
204+2.563.07#2/7Third party
204+2.563.07#2/7Primary
Hairline = pool best · tick = pool median · a missing bar is "not scored", never zero
Margin−23behind GEODNET, #1
RobustnessHoldsacross a one-point change to each of its 4 criterion scores, the re-run scores 55–59 and stays #2
Evidence4 of 4 scored4 quoted, 4 with a source link
What would move the rank

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.

Verified dollar demand 3 → 1 on its ladder · Wingbits passes it−253#2 → #3
Reward integrity and liquidity 4 → 1 on its ladder · Wingbits passes it−353#2 → #3
Operator disclosure quality 4 → 1 on its ladder · Wingbits passes it−353#2 → #3
Strengths

Where it leads

1 from the score data
Record says best for
  • Reward integrity and liquidity — 4/10
  • Operator disclosure quality — 4/10
Tradeoffs

Where it trails

4 from the score data
Record watch-outs
  • 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.
Competitive position

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.

Availability#1 / 714.0 of 20 · pool best
Published criteria#2 / 77.6 of 30 · best 16.4
Friction#1 / 72.7 of 10 · pool best
Trust record#1 / 73.2 of 8 · pool best
Measured data#1 / 78.3 of 18 · pool best
Where Helium leads
  • Verified dollar demand#3 / 7
  • Payback at today's token price#2 / 7
  • Reward integrity and liquidity#2 / 7
  • Operator disclosure quality#2 / 7
Where it trailsNo criterion in the bottom third of its pool.
Closest alternatives

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.

Wingbits#3 of 7 · score 53 · 4.0 points behind
Helium leads on
  • Verified dollar demand3 vs 2
  • Operator disclosure quality4 vs 3
Wingbits leads onNo scored criterion
Largest single reason Helium is ahead: published criteria (+3.6 display points).Scenario cost: Wingbits has no verified pricing for this scenario.
WeatherXM#4 of 7 · score 51 · 6.0 points behind
Helium leads on
  • Verified dollar demand3 vs 2
  • Payback at today's token price2 vs 1
  • Reward integrity and liquidity4 vs 2
WeatherXM leads onNo scored criterion
Largest single reason Helium is ahead: published criteria (+6.2 display points).Scenario cost: WeatherXM has no verified pricing for this scenario.
DIMO#5 of 7 · score 48 · 9.0 points behind
Helium leads on
  • Verified dollar demand3 vs 2
  • Payback at today's token price2 vs 1
  • Reward integrity and liquidity4 vs 2
DIMO leads onNo scored criterion
Largest single reason Helium is ahead: published criteria (+8.8 display points).Scenario cost: DIMO has no verified pricing for this scenario.
Against the leader

Why GEODNET ranks above Helium

80 vs 57 · gap 23.0

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.

DimensionThisGEODNETGap share
Availability · 23% weight14.014.00
Published criteria · 35% weight7.616.4−22.9
Friction · 12% weight2.72.70
Trust record · 9% weight3.23.20
Measured data · 21% weight8.38.30
Published criterionThisGEODNETPoints
Verified dollar demand · w3538−5.60
Payback at today's token price · w2525−2.40
Reward integrity and liquidity · w2047−1.92
Operator disclosure quality · w2047−1.92
Net5780−23.0
For your setup

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
Find my best depin networkNothing is inferred from clicks, popularity or commercial value.
Your scenario

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.

your cost/yr · default scenario — set your own
Usage per month · your input10

Rate read from the provider’s published pricing ↗ on 15 Sept 2026.

your cost/yr
Pricing not verified
Under the default inputs · USD
Category medianNot priced0 of 7 rows priced
Cheapest pricedNone pricedDifference not stated · availability not applied — set your country to filter
Cost is stated as your cost/yr in USD; it is never a yield, never annualised, and it does not enter the score.

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

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.

4 of 4 cells scored
Score evidenceVerified4 of 4 criteria reconstruct from receipts
Public receiptsAvailable4 quoted with a source URL
Evidence confidenceHighcoverage and corroboration, never freshness
Rank stabilityHoldsone point moves 2.2 display points
Coverage100%4 of 4 criteria scored
Freshness13 days agonewest read 15 Sept 2026 · current
Primary-source share50%2 of 4 sourced cells
Conflicts0file and table agree
The newest evidence read on the platform is 5 Sept 2026; this category's reading is older. The scores stand as read on 5 Aug 2026.
CriterionSourceTypeReadFreshnessStatusReceipt
Verified dollar demandstrength 3 · weight 35Report an errorapi.llama.fiThird-party page15 Sept 2026CurrentVerifiedOpen the receipt
Payback at today's token pricestrength 2 · weight 25Report an errorwww.helium.comProvider's own page15 Sept 2026CurrentVerifiedOpen the receipt
Reward integrity and liquiditystrength 4 · weight 20Report an errorapi.coingecko.comThird-party page15 Sept 2026CurrentVerifiedOpen the receipt
Operator disclosure qualitystrength 4 · weight 20Report an errorwww.helium.comProvider's own page15 Sept 2026CurrentVerifiedOpen the receipt
* category-wide reading date; the cell carries none of its own.
Facts

What the record publishes

facts, not scores
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.

History

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.

7 methodology entries
  1. 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.
  2. 16 Sept 2026
    2026.09.15
    Dimension 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.
  3. 10 Sept 2026
    2026.09.5
    The 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.
  4. 6 Sept 2026
    2026.09.3
    The 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.
Full methodology changelog
Methodology

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
What changed in this methodology version?
2026.09.15 · Dimension scores carry tenths, and eleven more categories are re-read from primary sources
  • 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.

Your decision summary

Helium: #2 of 7 overall

Leads on reward integrity and liquidity; trails on verified dollar demand. Set your country for an availability verdict. Review the evidence before deciding.

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