Bubble
Helium HNT
Helium (HNT) was trading at $0.5323, ranked #269 by market cap at $99.85M, with 24h volume of $24.57M.
Data snapshot: 2026-09-02 12:15 UTC.
Helium pays people to run wireless hotspots, building coverage from the bottom up instead of a carrier laying its own infrastructure — the original template for what the industry now calls depin. It migrated from its own blockchain to Solana in 2023, and its clearest real-world product today is Helium Mobile, a US phone plan that offloads traffic onto that community-run network. Helium is the most-tested case of paying people in tokens to deploy physical hardware: individuals bought hotspots and earned HNT for providing wireless coverage. It built real infrastructure at genuine scale, and it also demonstrated the category's central problem — coverage was deployed where rewards were, not necessarily where demand was, so a large network can exist alongside modest paying usage. It has since moved to Solana and expanded into mobile service. On this map HNT is the reference asset for physical-infrastructure networks.
How does Helium work?
Individuals deploy hotspot hardware providing wireless coverage and earn tokens for it, which is how the network was built without a telecom operator's capital.
What is the main criticism?
Coverage was deployed where rewards were highest rather than where demand existed, so network size and paying usage diverged significantly.
Why did it move to Solana?
To reduce operating costs and use an existing high-throughput chain rather than maintaining its own network infrastructure.
What does it teach about this sector?
That token incentives reliably produce hardware deployment, but deployment is not the same as demand. Usage revenue is the number that matters.
Market cap decides how big a bubble is drawn, so rank is what places HNT on the map relative to the rest of its sector.
| Rank | Coin | Market cap |
|---|---|---|
| #186 | Theta Network (THETA) | $167.02M |
| #204 | Arweave (AR) | $144.49M |
| #269 | Helium (HNT) | $99.85M |
| #285 | Aethir (ATH) | $91.29M |
| #366 | Livepeer (LPT) | $65.33M |