Helium Hit 600K Subscribers and 2M Daily Users and AT&T Is Offloading Traffic to Its Network - The DePIN Proof Point Is Here

General
1

After Years of Skepticism, Helium Is Generating Real Revenue From Real Telecom Companies

I’ve been skeptical of DePIN since the first Helium IoT hype cycle in 2021-2022. The original promise — a decentralized IoT network that would somehow compete with established telecom infrastructure — always felt like a solution looking for a problem.

I was wrong. Not completely, but substantially. Here’s what changed.

The Numbers That Changed My Mind

Helium Mobile in 2025:

  • 600,000+ subscribers by year-end
  • 2 million daily active users (up from 250K at start of 2025 — nearly 10x growth)
  • Customers saved over $75M by switching to Helium Mobile
  • Quarterly subscriber growth: 28.5% (Q1) → 94% (Q2) → 48% (Q3)
  • AT&T and Telefonica actively offloading mobile data through Helium’s network

HNT Tokenomics:

  • Annual emissions halved to 7.5M HNT (August 2025)
  • 100% of Helium Mobile subscriber revenue used to buy and burn HNT
  • The network is approaching or has achieved net deflationary status — more HNT burned than emitted

Why AT&T Integration Matters

This is the detail that convinced me. AT&T — one of the largest telecom companies in the world — is using Helium’s decentralized network to offload mobile traffic in congested areas like stadiums, airports, and dense urban centers.

This isn’t a pilot. It’s not a “partnership announcement” with no substance. AT&T is routing real subscriber traffic through community-deployed Helium hotspots because it’s cheaper than deploying their own small cells in those locations.

The economics are simple:

  • A traditional small cell deployment costs $30,000-$50,000 per site
  • A Helium hotspot costs $300-$500 and is deployed by community members
  • The network covers dense areas through crowdsourced deployment at a fraction of the cost
  • AT&T saves on capex while improving coverage

This is what product-market fit looks like in DePIN: a Fortune 500 company choosing decentralized infrastructure over centralized alternatives because it’s economically rational.

The Broader DePIN Landscape

Helium isn’t alone. The DePIN sector has grown significantly:

  • Combined market cap: $19.2 billion (as of September 2025), up 270% year-over-year from $5.2 billion
  • VC investment: Over $740 million invested in DePIN projects in 2025
  • Project count: Nearly 250 projects tracked by CoinGecko
  • Solana dominance: Most high-throughput DePIN projects (Helium, Hivemapper, Grass) build on Solana due to low transaction costs

Other notable DePIN projects showing real traction:

  • Render: GPU compute for AI and rendering, peaked at $746K monthly revenue
  • Akash: Decentralized cloud computing, recently added NVIDIA B200 and H200 GPU support
  • Hivemapper: Decentralized mapping with dashcam-equipped vehicles
  • Grass: Decentralized data collection for AI training

What “Real” Means in DePIN

I want to be precise about what I mean by “DePIN is finally real”:

What IS real:

  • Revenue from non-crypto customers (AT&T, Telefonica, enterprise mapping clients)
  • Hardware deployed at scale (hundreds of thousands of devices)
  • Cost advantage over centralized alternatives in specific use cases
  • Deflationary token economics backed by actual usage

What ISN’T real (yet):

  • Self-sustaining profitability for most node operators
  • Competitive quality of service with centralized alternatives across all conditions
  • Mainstream consumer awareness of DePIN
  • Regulatory clarity for decentralized infrastructure operators

The Question

Is Helium’s success replicable? Or is wireless connectivity a special case — a category where crowdsourced deployment makes sense, but that doesn’t generalize to compute, storage, or sensors?

I think the answer depends on whether DePIN projects can demonstrate the same thing Helium demonstrated: that traditional enterprises choose decentralized infrastructure for economic reasons, not ideological ones.

What’s your experience with DePIN projects? And do you think Helium is the exception or the template?

2

Brian’s analysis nails why Helium is the standout DePIN story. Let me add the business strategy perspective on why AT&T’s integration is a bigger deal than most people realize.

The Enterprise Validation Loop

In startup terms, Helium just achieved the hardest milestone in B2B: a large enterprise customer using your product in production, not as a pilot.

Here’s why this matters for the broader DePIN thesis:

1. Proof of unit economics: AT&T has thousands of engineers who evaluated Helium’s network quality, reliability, and cost. They chose to route real subscriber traffic through it. This means Helium’s cost advantage over traditional small cells is verified by the most demanding possible customer.

2. Reference customer effect: When a startup lands AT&T as a customer, every other telecom company pays attention. Telefonica’s integration followed a similar pattern. The next tier of telcos (T-Mobile, Verizon, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom) are now evaluating whether Helium’s economics work for their networks too.

3. Revenue predictability: Enterprise telecom contracts are multi-year. Once AT&T is routing traffic through Helium, the switching costs are high. This gives Helium predictable, non-crypto revenue — the holy grail for any token-based project.

The $75M Customer Savings Signal

The stat that 600K subscribers saved $75M is equally important. That’s an average savings of $125 per subscriber — meaningful enough to drive organic word-of-mouth growth without relying on token incentives.

This is the sustainability test: would users stick with Helium Mobile if there were no HNT rewards? At $125/year in savings, many would. That’s fundamentally different from most DePIN projects where the only incentive to participate is token emissions.

Where I Push Back

That said, I want to temper the enthusiasm:

  • 600K subscribers is impressive for a crypto project but tiny for a telecom company. T-Mobile has 120M+ subscribers. Helium is at 0.5% of that scale.
  • The $75M in customer savings suggests average plan prices around $10-15/month — which means Helium Mobile is competing on price, not quality. Price-competitive products are vulnerable to incumbents cutting prices.
  • AT&T offloading traffic to Helium in congested areas is smart, but it’s a complementary use case, not a replacement for AT&T’s core network.

Helium is real. But it’s real as a telecom supplement, not a telecom replacement. That’s still a massive market — but the narrative shouldn’t get ahead of the reality.

3

The market data on DePIN tells an interesting story that goes beyond Helium. Let me break down what the capital flows are actually saying.

DePIN Market Structure Analysis

The sector-level numbers Brian cites — $19.2B market cap, $740M in VC investment, 270% YoY growth — need context:

Market cap breakdown by category:

  • AI/Compute DePIN: ~48% of total market cap (Render, Akash, Bittensor)
  • Wireless/Connectivity: ~20% (Helium, XNET)
  • Storage: ~15% (Filecoin, Arweave)
  • Sensors/Data: ~10% (Hivemapper, DIMO, Grass)
  • Energy: ~7% (others)

The fact that AI-related DePIN dominates nearly half the market cap is telling. The market is pricing DePIN primarily as an AI infrastructure play, not a wireless play. Helium’s success story is impressive but it’s not what’s driving capital into the sector.

HNT Token Analysis

The deflationary HNT model deserves closer examination:

Bull case:

  • Emission halving (7.5M HNT/year) reduces sell pressure
  • 100% of subscriber revenue burns HNT — direct link between usage and scarcity
  • If subscriber growth continues at 40-50% QoQ, burn rate could exceed emissions
  • AT&T/Telefonica integration creates enterprise revenue floor

Bear case:

  • HNT price is still heavily correlated with broader crypto market, not usage metrics
  • veHNT redelegation rates need to stay above 65% for the staking model to work
  • Subscriber revenue per HNT burned is small relative to speculative trading volume
  • The token is still primarily a speculative asset, not a utility asset

My Trading Perspective

For traders, Helium is one of the few DePIN tokens with verifiable revenue growth. The deflationary thesis is compelling if subscriber growth maintains. But I’m watching the veHNT staking participation rate as the key leading indicator — if it drops below 60%, the token economics start to strain.

The broader DePIN sector is a mixed bag. Helium and Render have real traction. Most of the other 248 projects are pre-revenue or declining. The sector’s 270% market cap growth was driven by narrative and VC deployment, not broadly distributed revenue growth.

Brian’s right that DePIN is “finally real” — but only for the top 5-10 projects. The long tail is still mostly vaporware.

4

Brian asked whether Helium’s success is replicable, and as a developer who’s explored building on DePIN infrastructure, I want to share what the development experience actually looks like.

The Developer’s View of DePIN Infrastructure

I’ve experimented with three DePIN platforms: Helium (for location services), Render (for GPU compute), and Akash (for general compute). Here’s the practical reality:

What Works

Render for GPU rendering: I used Render to process 3D rendering jobs for a side project. The experience was surprisingly smooth — submit a job, get results back, pay in RENDER tokens. The quality was comparable to cloud rendering services at roughly 40% lower cost.

Akash for dev/test workloads: I deployed a staging environment on Akash. The cost was about 70% less than AWS for equivalent compute. For non-critical workloads where occasional downtime is acceptable, it’s genuinely competitive.

What Doesn’t Work (Yet)

Reliability for production workloads: Neither Render nor Akash provides the SLA guarantees that production applications need. If a node goes offline mid-computation, you lose work. For my DeFi protocol’s backend, that’s a non-starter.

Developer tooling: The SDK experience is rough compared to AWS/GCP. No equivalent of CloudFormation, Terraform plugins are early, monitoring is basic. You need to be comfortable with significant DevOps overhead.

Network quality variance: Helium’s wireless coverage is great in some areas and nonexistent in others. For a location service, this inconsistency makes it unreliable as a primary data source.

The DePIN Developer Thesis

Brian’s question about replicability comes down to: where does crowdsourced physical infrastructure outperform centralized alternatives?

My experience suggests:

  • Compute (burst/batch): Yes — for non-critical, price-sensitive workloads. Render and Akash are competitive.
  • Compute (production): Not yet — reliability and SLA gaps are too wide.
  • Wireless coverage: Yes, for supplementary coverage in specific areas. Not for primary service.
  • Sensors/data collection: Maybe — if the data doesn’t need real-time guarantees.

Helium proved that DePIN works for wireless. The question is whether compute, storage, and sensor DePIN can achieve the same enterprise adoption. From a developer perspective, they’re 2-3 years behind Helium’s maturity curve.

5

Brian’s post highlights the enterprise adoption angle, but I want to flag the regulatory dimension that could either accelerate or derail DePIN’s trajectory.

The Regulatory Landscape for DePIN

DePIN sits at an unusual regulatory intersection: it’s crypto infrastructure that directly interfaces with regulated physical industries (telecom, energy, transportation). This creates unique challenges.

Telecom Regulation (Helium’s Challenge)

Helium operates in the CBRS (Citizens Broadband Radio Service) spectrum band, which the FCC opened for shared use. This is what makes community-deployed hotspots legal in the US. But:

  • CBRS licensing requirements vary by deployment size and location
  • International markets have different spectrum regulations — Helium can’t simply replicate the US model globally
  • AT&T’s integration raises questions about whether Helium hotspot operators are acting as unlicensed telecom providers
  • The FCC hasn’t specifically addressed decentralized wireless networks in its regulatory framework

Securities Implications

HNT’s deflationary burn mechanism, where subscriber revenue buys and burns tokens, looks a lot like a revenue-sharing arrangement. If the SEC views HNT as a security:

  • Hotspot operators earning HNT might need to be registered
  • The token’s public sale and exchange listings could face scrutiny
  • International operators face their own securities regulation

The Regulatory Advantage

Paradoxically, DePIN’s physical infrastructure footprint could be a regulatory asset:

:balance_scale: Unlike purely digital crypto protocols, DePIN projects create real economic activity — jobs (hardware installation), tax revenue (equipment purchases), and public goods (network coverage). Regulators who want to support crypto innovation have an easier time justifying support for projects that build physical infrastructure.

Helium’s AT&T integration is particularly useful here. When a DePIN project can demonstrate that it helps a Fortune 500 company serve customers better, the regulatory narrative shifts from “speculative crypto” to “innovative infrastructure.”

The 2026 regulatory environment is cautiously favorable for DePIN, but the sector needs proactive engagement with regulators before a crisis forces reactive regulation.