Helium was founded in 2013 by Shawn Fning, Amir Haleem, and Sean Carey with a mission to make building connected devices easier. With Helium hotspots, anyone can earn cryptocurrency by building wireless networks in their city and creating a more connected future.

Helium is a point-to-point wireless network built for low-energy IoT devices to communicate with the Internet. Utilizing Hotspots and other data transmitters for IoT devices, network maintainers can prove their contribution to the network through Proof of Coverage Challenges and be rewarded with HNT tokens. Proof of Coverage is a type of proof-of-work (POW) algorithm that uses electromagnetic waves to verify whether Hotspots provide services.

HNT tokens can generate Data Credits, which are used to pay for information and token transmission fees. The Helium network utilizes a HoneyBadgerBFT-based mechanism to achieve network consensus.