Helium Opens 7-Day Vote on HIP-149, Its Biggest Governance Decision Since Moving to Solana

Helium Network N/A$0.229-8.9% HNT voting on the most sweeping governance proposal in the network's history opened today at 4pm PT. The vote runs for seven days on heliumvote.com, where veHNT holders can vote yes or no on HIP-149: Helium Utility and Emissions Realignment.

The proposal bundles four decisions into a single on-chain vote: revenue-linked pay for Mobile data deployers, a new ~141 million HNT operations and growth supplement, the retirement of Proof-of-Coverage on both the Mobile and IoT networks, and a seven-seat Advisory Council to oversee how the supplement is spent. Approval requires a 66.67% supermajority of votes cast, with a minimum quorum of 100 million veHNT.

What HIP-149 Changes, Decision by Decision

Decision 1: Revenue-Linked Pay for Mobile Deployers

The proposal replaces the original $0.50/GB target set in 2022 with a band tied to the per-GB offload price Nova Labs sets under HIP-143. Mobile data deployers would earn within a range of half to three times that rate, denominated in HNT. Before the vote, Nova is reducing the payer rate from $0.50/GB to approximately $0.10/GB under its existing HIP-143 authority, reflecting current commercial offload economics. The resulting band runs from a floor of $0.05/GB to a cap of $0.30/GB at current rates.

The floor mechanism mints additional HNT to top up deployer earnings when the baseline falls short, but caps that top-up at the HNT recently burned, so the floor alone does not add to net supply. When HNT appreciates and the baseline exceeds the cap, the excess flows to veHNT stakers instead of deployers. At current HNT prices and approximately 91,000 GB/day in rewardable network volume, the proposal text notes that the floor is already binding: deployers are earning below the proposed minimum today.

Decision 2: ~141M HNT Operations and Growth Supplement

A new mint stream would send approximately 196,000 HNT per epoch into a Squads multisig vault administered by Nova Labs for 12 months at a flat rate, then taper linearly to zero over another 24 months. Total accrual over 36 months: approximately 141 million HNT, about 77% of current on-chain supply. The effective maximum HNT supply would rise from approximately 206 million today to approximately 347 million.

The stated uses are international carrier expansion, deployer programs, core engineering, ecosystem grants, and regulatory work. The vault address is fixed at the program upgrade; outflows are observable on-chain. The supplement does not flow into hotspot rewards; it goes to the vault only.

Decision 3: Proof-of-Coverage Retirement on Both Networks

Proof-of-Coverage exits both the Mobile and IoT networks. On Mobile, the PoC reward bucket is zeroed; the data deployer allocation stays at 70% and Service Provider Rewards remain at 24%. On IoT, the PoC bucket retires and its share moves into the IoT Operations Fund. IoT data transfer continues on the existing dollar-per-DC peg, meaning IoT deployers see no change to their revenue mechanism. Mobile deployers earning primarily through coverage proofs and serving little actual traffic will see those rewards fall to zero when the program upgrade ships.

The rationale in the HIP text: HIP-147's "data eats first" rule, which passed last September, already pushed most viable Mobile deployments toward carrier offload within weeks. The residual PoC bucket has been paying for infrastructure that exists rather than infrastructure serving subscribers.

Decision 4: Seven-Seat Advisory Council

A seven-seat body with five community-nominated members and two Nova Labs appointees. Community seats are filled by veHNT-weighted vote; nominees above a low veHNT threshold can put themselves forward. The Council's authority is oversight rather than control: it can demand disclosure, publish dissent, and recommend a curtailment of the supplement, but a curtailment only takes effect after a separate community vote passes with a simple majority and 100 million veHNT quorum. That asymmetry is intentional. Authorizing the supplement takes a 66.67% supermajority; curtailing it takes a simple majority.

The Context: Why Now

Rewardable bytes on the Helium Mobile network grew approximately 4x over the past year (from roughly 24,000 GB/day in June 2025 to roughly 97,000 GB/day in April 2026) while HNT issuance stayed fixed and the token price fell. The result, according to the proposal, is that deployer earnings became decoupled from the revenue the network actually generates. Carriers burn HNT to create the Data Credits they spend on offload; those credits leave circulation permanently. Deployers, meanwhile, received HNT rewards based on a fixed schedule rather than on what carriers were paying.

Noble Mobile's acquisition of the Helium Mobile consumer MVNO business in early June left the underlying Helium wireless protocol intact and set up a carrier relationship the proposal now aims to resource. At the June 10 community town hall, the Helium team cited a US carrier request covering more than 30,000 locations as evidence of existing demand, alongside AT&T showing approximately 2 million daily connections and T-Mobile approaching 1 million daily active users on the network.

The proposal frames those numbers as a demand signal that the existing economic framework was not built to handle. As HIP-149's preamble states: "The last two years brought real validation from carrier demand, but Helium's original economic framework hasn't kept up."

What Passes, What Doesn't

HIP-149 retires ten Mobile HIP governance documents and seven IoT ones, replacing the coverage-proof reward model that has governed the network since its early days. It preserves the HIP-20 halving schedule, the veHNT lockup mechanics, the 6% delegator allocation, the single-token HNT model introduced by HIP-138, and Nova's authority to set the payer rate under HIP-143.

The proposal is explicit about its drawbacks. The most significant is dilution: effective maximum HNT supply rises by approximately 68% over three years. Voters also cannot accept three of the four decisions and reject one — the decisions are operationally linked (the Advisory Council exists to oversee the supplement, and the target minimum relies on the same program upgrade as PoC retirement), and all four ship together or none do.

The deployment sequence matters. Once the vote passes, the Council must be seated before the program upgrade ships. Two weeks after seating, the first-window supplement begins minting. The Council has that two-week window to raise a curtailment vote if it concludes the supplement should not start.

The Helium Network's DePIN coverage milestone at Redondo Beach earlier this week illustrated what the network delivers at the hotspot level. HIP-149 is the governance counterpart: the mechanism question of how the protocol compensates deployers for that utility and funds expansion to more locations.

The vote closes July 2 at heliumvote.com.