Helium's HIP-149 Passes: Advisory Council Election Now Open to veHNT Holders

Helium Network HNT$0.214+0.3% HIP-149 has passed, and the first consequence is already live: a community election for five seats on a new Advisory Council, open at heliumvote.com through July 20, 2026. The vote cleared the required 66.67% supermajority, and the council election followed immediately.

Twelve nominees are competing for five community seats on the seven-member body. Nova Labs directly appoints the remaining two.

What Helium Is, and Why This Vote Has Teeth

For readers who follow Solana without tracking Helium closely: the HNT network is a decentralized wireless protocol where anyone can deploy physical hotspots to earn tokens in exchange for providing real IoT and mobile connectivity coverage. It runs on Solana (the network migrated from its own L1 chain in April 2023) and its governance has operated through veHNT-weighted on-chain votes since.

HIP-149 bundled four decisions into one vote: retiring Proof-of-Coverage on both the Mobile and IoT networks, shifting Mobile data deployer earnings to a revenue-linked model, authorizing a supplemental mint of approximately 141 million HNT to fund ongoing operations and growth, and creating the Advisory Council to oversee how that supplement is used.

The supplemental mint is the number that concentrates attention. Per the HIP-149 text, it raises the effective maximum HNT supply from roughly 206 million to roughly 347 million tokens, disbursed over 36 months: about 196,000 HNT per epoch in a flat first window of approximately 12 months, tapering linearly over the next 24. For context, Solana Compass token data shows HNT's circulating supply at approximately 181.9 million as of July 14, meaning the supplement alone would add roughly 77% of current supply to the outstanding token count over three years. The community was willing to authorize that expansion. It was not willing to do so without someone watching how the money leaves.

What the Advisory Council Can and Cannot Do

The council holds oversight authority, not control. Per the HIP-149 governance text, members receive NDA-level access to how the supplement is allocated, a level of disclosure the public ledger alone cannot provide for Nova Labs' off-chain operational spending. They can demand further disclosures, publish statements of dissent, and trigger a community curtailment vote.

That last power has an asymmetry worth noting. The HIP-149 authorization required a 66.67% supermajority with a 100 million veHNT quorum. A curtailment vote triggered by the council needs only a simple majority of voted veHNT, with the same quorum. Authorizing the supplement was harder than stopping it.

What the council cannot do: redirect funds directly, override the payer-rate setting that governs deployer earnings, or spend on behalf of the network. Its role is structural accountability: observe, disclose, dissent, and, if warranted, call the question.

The @helium account described the arrangement as "more transparency than most public companies give shareholders."

Each of the five community seats carries compensation of approximately 352,500 HNT over the 36-month program — drawn from 1.25% of the total supplement, roughly 1.76 million HNT split across the five seats per the HIP-149 governance text. Nova Labs-appointed seats serve without compensation.

Twelve Nominees, Five Seats

The nomination period closed July 12. Twelve candidates are competing for the five community seats. Full bios are at helium.com/proposal; the field in brief:

Adrian Clint deployed one of the first hotspots outside the US in 2019 and currently operates IoT hotspots, sensors, and UK brownfield WiFi infrastructure.

Chris Ferebee deployed IoT across Europe from early 2021 and operates one of the first successful Helium Mobile brownfield installations; he has also published technical guides for the community.

Eric Eife has worked with Nova Labs and carrier partners on network advocacy and direct ecosystem support.

Jacob Brady has operated small-scale IoT and Mobile equipment since his first hotspot went live in August 2020.

James Fayal has run more than 100 miners across US cities since 2019 and contributed proposals to Helium governance discussions on token economics and protocol design.

Jeremy Harris operates more than 20 IoT hotspots around Bloomington, Indiana and runs mobile hotspots.

Jeremy Mahrle has served multiple Mobile Working Group terms, including as chair, with a focus on collaborative network building.

Keith Rettig served multiple Mobile Working Group terms with a focus specifically on oversight of the HIP-149 mint and responsible allocation.

Omar Henry is the founder of Decentralized LLC and brings banking and logistics industry experience to the network.

Pepe Ortiz has been active in the ecosystem for nearly five years and frames his candidacy around long-term hands-on participation.

Samuel Andrews MD combines mobile data deployer experience with financial analysis expertise, with supplement allocation oversight as his stated focus.

Thomas Kuit has been active since 2021 with IoT hotspots in London and has participated in network development discussions.

Per the HIP-149 governance text, council members are expected to act independently and in the interest of HNT holders, not as delegates for any particular deployment type or regional constituency.

Three Ways to Vote Before July 20

The election is weighted by veHNT, the vote-escrowed form of HNT representing tokens locked for a defined period. Each holder can vote for up to five candidates. The five with the highest veHNT support win the community seats.

Three voting methods are available:

• heliumvote.com — the primary interface
• world.helium.com — an alternative web interface
• The Helium Wallet app — for mobile voters

Holders who prefer to delegate can assign proxy voting rights at heliumvote.com/hnt/proxies. Several nominees, including Chris Ferebee, have already published proxy addresses on the platform.

The election closes July 20. Council members begin service after the seats are confirmed.

As we covered when HIP-149's vote first opened, this is the most consequential governance change Helium has made since moving to Solana. The supplemental mint adds real supply to HNT. Whether the community trusts how that supply is deployed will depend substantially on who sits in these five seats and on whether the council uses the disclosure authority it now holds.