$HNT Soars 228% as America’s Fastest-Growing City Turns to Helium DePIN

Helium, a Solana DePIN heavyweight, is assisting with the connectivity buildout of Celina, Texas, America’s fastest-growing city.

Growing by over 12,700 residents in the past year, the City of Celina sees Helium as a faster and more affordable way of scaling the needs of an emerging city.

The collaboration comes after a difficult restructuring at Helium, which saw its native token plummet following the acquisition of its Mobile service by Andrew Yang’s Noble Mobile.

DePIN is Now Powering Cities

Celina, Texas, America’s fastest-growing city, has confirmed a collaboration with the Helium Network to scale the city’s connectivity growth. With Celina welcoming over 12,700 new residents and growing by 24.6% in the last year, city planners argue that DePIN can help scale the city’s expansion much faster than traditional infrastructure buildouts.

"Celina is growing faster than any city in America, and our infrastructure has to work as hard as our community does. Helium let us turn Wi-Fi we already own into coverage our residents' phones use automatically, without spending a dollar on new towers." - Amy Alexander, Director of Information Technology for the City of Celina

In practice, the City’s public buildings, like Celina Public Library and the Ralph O'Dell Senior Center are now actively contributing to the Helium Network, giving the city’s residents reliable connectivity via DePIN.

"When a city grows 25 percent in a year, demand for connectivity doesn't wait for new towers to be permitted and built. Celina proves there's a faster path. The infrastructure cities already own can carry carrier traffic today. This is what the future of coverage looks like in high-growth America." - Mario Di Dio, Helium CEO

Currently, the Helium Network is carrying around 100GB per day of customer data across the city, with future hotspots expected to be deployed in the coming months. 

According to Helium Explorer data, the wider network now serves over 2.5M daily users, carrying over 104TB’s of data every day.

Helium Bounces Back After Polarizing Acquisition

Despite consistent growth across its expanding global network, the last few months haven’t been kind to Helium. One of crypto’s most established DePIN networks, Helium came under fire from its community earlier this year after the acquisition of its mobile service arm by Andrew Yang’s Noble Mobile.

Beyond the acquisition, a critical governance proposal, Hip-149, would ultimately reduce contributor earnings. The proposal revealed that the network was not as economically sound as many had thought. 

Hotspot operators were earning dramatically more than the economic value produced by the network, resulting in distrust among contributors. $HNT sold off heavily in the fallout, falling 67% over the course of June.

However, recent activity appears to have restored faith in the network’s native asset. $HNT ripped over 380% in a matter of hours following the announcement of its collaboration with the City of Celina, Texas. At press time, $HNT is attempting to stabilize at a $137.9M valuation, currently trading hands at $0.73.

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