Helium's Data Credit Burns Doubled to $361K/Month, AT&T Integrated Its Network, but the Zero Plan Now Has Fees - Is DePIN Telecom Growing Up or Selling Out?

General
1

The Numbers Tell a Story of Genuine Traction

Something remarkable has been unfolding in the Helium ecosystem over the past twelve months, and it deserves serious analysis from the DePIN community. The headline numbers are staggering: Data Credit burns nearly tripled from Q1 to Q3 2025, climbing from an average of ~$6,170/day to over $30,920/day — representing a 196% quarter-over-quarter surge in Q3 alone. Monthly burn rates crossed the $361K threshold, and by Q4 2025, annualized revenue had climbed to $18.3 million. Even more significant: HNT network revenue burns now outpace daily emissions, pushing the token into net deflation territory for the first time.

These are not speculative metrics. They represent actual data transferred, actual subscribers paying, and actual carrier partners offloading traffic onto decentralized infrastructure.

AT&T and the Passpoint Roaming Integration

In April 2025, something happened that would have sounded like fantasy three years ago: AT&T subscribers began automatically connecting to Helium community Wi-Fi hotspots through Passpoint roaming. No app downloads. No manual connections. AT&T devices just seamlessly authenticated via Passpoint/Hotspot 2.0, using credentials stored in SIM cards or TLS certificates delivered over-the-top.

This was not a press release partnership — it was a technical integration across more than 62,000 U.S. hotspots. AT&T reportedly reduces its capital expenditures by up to 40% compared to deploying conventional cell towers, while improving coverage in underserved areas. Telefónica’s Movistar followed suit in Mexico, supporting over 2.3 million subscribers in regions like Mexico City and Oaxaca.

The data offload numbers confirm this is real: the Helium network transferred over 5,452 TB of data in Q3 2025, a 100.4% QoQ increase. T-Mobile continues to be a core partner, and HIP 130 now allows existing access point manufacturers to transform their equipment into Helium-powered hotspots using Hotspot 2.0 technology without requiring Proof-of-Coverage rewards.

The Zero Plan Controversy

But not everything is rosy in Helium-land. Starting January 27, 2026, the famous Zero Plan — marketed as a truly free mobile phone service — began charging taxes and regulatory fees. While the plan technically remains “$0/month,” users now pay roughly $5–$8/month in government-mandated taxes and fees depending on their service address.

Additionally, the Zero Plan was downgraded to just 1 GB of data on T-Mobile’s nationwide network (down from previous allocations), with an additional 2 GB available only where Helium coverage exists. Meanwhile, legacy $5 and $20 unlimited plans were eliminated entirely, with users auto-migrated to the $15/month “Air” plan (10 GB data) if they didn’t switch manually.

Community reaction has been predictably mixed. Long-time early adopters feel betrayed — they signed up for a free plan and are now being charged. Helium Mobile’s response is that these are third-party government charges they have no control over, but the timing alongside plan restructuring feels deliberate to many users.

The Bigger Question: Is DePIN Telecom Maturing?

I think we need to look at this with nuance rather than binary “bullish/bearish” takes:

The bull case is strong:

  • 541,000+ subscribers as of November 2025, up from ~115,000 a year prior (nearly 370% YoY growth)
  • Daily active users approaching 2 million
  • Net deflationary tokenomics achieved through real revenue
  • Carrier-grade technical integrations, not just partnerships on paper
  • HNT buyback-and-burn strategy converting 100% of Helium Mobile subscriber revenue into burned tokens since August 2025

The bear concerns are legitimate:

  • “Free” plans that now cost money erode trust in the community
  • Legacy plan eliminations force users into higher-priced tiers
  • Concentration risk with carrier partners who could change terms
  • The gap between 541K subscribers and 1.7M daily active users suggests heavy non-paying usage

What This Means for DePIN Broadly

Helium’s trajectory is arguably the single most important case study for the entire DePIN thesis. If a decentralized wireless network can embed itself inside AT&T’s roaming infrastructure, achieve net deflationary tokenomics through real usage, and grow subscribers at triple-digit rates — that validates the core idea that crypto-incentivized physical infrastructure can compete with incumbents.

But if it simultaneously needs to walk back its most compelling consumer proposition (free mobile service) to maintain margins, that tells us something about the economic realities of competing in telecom — even with decentralized infrastructure cost advantages.

I’d love to hear the community’s thoughts:

  1. Are the Data Credit burn rates sustainable, or is this peak cycle behavior?
  2. Does the AT&T integration represent a template other DePIN verticals can follow?
  3. Is charging fees on the Zero Plan a necessary maturation step or a broken promise?
  4. What does Helium’s path tell us about building DePIN infrastructure for other verticals (energy, compute, storage)?

Looking forward to a vigorous discussion.

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Great breakdown, Brian. I want to zoom in on the tokenomics angle because the burn mechanics here are genuinely novel and worth dissecting for anyone building DePIN token models.

The Burn-Revenue Flywheel Is Real

The most underappreciated development is the August 2025 decision to burn HNT equivalent to 100% of Helium Mobile subscriber revenue. This is not a percentage fee or a partial allocation — every dollar of subscriber revenue gets converted into Data Credits, which permanently destroys HNT. When you combine this with the fact that Q4 2025 saw burns outpacing daily emissions, you get something genuinely unprecedented in crypto: a utility token achieving net deflation through organic demand, not through artificial supply restrictions or vesting schedule manipulation.

Let me put the numbers in context. At $18.3M annualized revenue (Q3 run rate), the network is burning roughly $50K/day in HNT. Daily HNT emissions are approximately 2,400 HNT. At any HNT price above roughly $20, the burn rate exceeds emissions in dollar terms. HNT has been trading well above that level, which means the supply is genuinely shrinking.

Why This Matters Beyond Helium

For those of us designing tokenomics for other DePIN projects, Helium has essentially validated a model: deploy infrastructure with token incentives, acquire real users, then let usage-based burns create deflationary pressure once scale is achieved. The key insight is that this only works if you reach sufficient scale — below the crossover point, token emissions dilute holders faster than burns can offset.

The critical threshold appears to be somewhere around 400-500K paying subscribers for a wireless network. That is an important benchmark for anyone modeling DePIN economics in adjacent verticals like decentralized storage or compute.

The Sustainability Question

Brian raised whether these burn rates are sustainable. I think the answer is conditionally yes — but only if carrier offload revenue keeps growing. The subscriber revenue is relatively sticky (people do not churn phone plans frequently), but the carrier offload revenue (AT&T, T-Mobile data) is contractual and could be renegotiated. If a major carrier pulls back on offload volumes, the burn rate drops proportionally.

The other risk is HNT price sensitivity. Burns are denominated in dollars (since Data Credits are pegged to $0.00001), so a rising HNT price means fewer tokens burned per dollar of revenue. Paradoxically, the deflationary narrative could weaken its own mechanism if the token price rises too fast. This is a feature of DC-pegged systems that does not get discussed enough.

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This is an excellent thread. I want to bring up the regulatory dimension that I think is actually the hidden catalyst behind several of these changes — including the Zero Plan fee controversy.

The Fee Pass-Through Is a Regulatory Compliance Issue

People are framing the Zero Plan fee change as Helium “selling out,” but the reality is more nuanced. As an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator), Helium Mobile is subject to the same FCC and state PUC (Public Utility Commission) regulations as any other carrier. The Universal Service Fund fees, E911 surcharges, state telecommunications taxes, and regulatory recovery fees are legally mandated pass-throughs. The question is not whether Helium should charge them — they are legally required to. The real question is why they absorbed these costs for so long.

The answer, I suspect, is that the early Zero Plan was operating in a regulatory gray area. As subscriber numbers climbed past 400K, Helium Mobile became large enough to attract regulatory attention. Charging $0 while absorbing $5-8/month in mandatory fees per subscriber does not scale. At 500K subscribers, that is roughly $3-4M/year in fees Helium was eating. The plan change was likely driven by regulatory necessity as much as business strategy.

The AT&T Passpoint Integration Has Regulatory Implications Too

What fascinates me about the AT&T integration is the regulatory framework it operates within. Passpoint/Hotspot 2.0 is governed by the Wi-Fi Alliance and complies with IEEE 802.11u standards. By using this established roaming framework, Helium effectively bypassed the need for spectrum licensing agreements — Wi-Fi operates in unlicensed spectrum. This is a regulatory arbitrage that traditional DePIN projects in other verticals cannot easily replicate.

However, this creates an interesting tension. As Helium hotspots carry more carrier traffic, there is increasing pressure from incumbents to reclassify dense community Wi-Fi deployments under different regulatory frameworks. We have already seen some municipalities push back on the proliferation of commercial-grade Wi-Fi hotspots in residential areas.

What Other DePIN Builders Should Watch

For anyone building DePIN infrastructure in regulated industries — energy, transportation, telecom — the Helium case offers a crucial lesson: regulatory compliance costs scale non-linearly with adoption. What works at 10K users may be legally untenable at 500K users. Building regulatory compliance into your tokenomics and business model from day one is essential, not something you can bolt on later.

The $5-8/month fee on the Zero Plan is Helium learning this lesson in real time. It is messy and it frustrates early adopters, but it is the cost of operating in a regulated market. DePIN projects that pretend regulation does not exist will face far worse outcomes.

4

Really appreciate the depth of analysis in this thread. I want to approach this from an infrastructure architecture perspective, because what Helium has built with the Passpoint integration is actually a masterclass in bridging Web2 and Web3 systems — and it has lessons for anyone working on cross-chain or cross-protocol infrastructure.

The Passpoint Bridge Is Architecturally Elegant

What Helium achieved with AT&T is essentially a protocol-level bridge between decentralized infrastructure and legacy telecom systems. Passpoint/Hotspot 2.0 (IEEE 802.11u) was designed for seamless roaming between Wi-Fi networks, originally for airports and hotels. Helium repurposed it to create an authentication layer where AT&T’s AAA (Authentication, Authorization, Accounting) servers talk to community-deployed hardware through standardized roaming protocols.

The genius is that AT&T’s systems do not need to know or care that the hotspot on the other end is operated by someone’s home router running Helium firmware. The Passpoint standard abstracts away the operator identity. From AT&T’s perspective, they are roaming onto a partner Wi-Fi network — no different from Boingo at an airport. From Helium’s perspective, each authenticated session generates Data Credit burns on-chain. The blockchain settlement layer is completely invisible to the carrier.

This is the template that other DePIN verticals need to study. The winning strategy is not to convince enterprises to “use blockchain” — it is to meet them where they are, using standards they already support, and let the crypto layer handle incentive coordination behind the scenes.

HIP 130 and the Data-Only Hotspot Expansion

I also want to highlight HIP 130, which allows existing access point manufacturers to create Helium-compatible hotspots that only handle data offload without participating in Proof-of-Coverage. This is a brilliant architectural decision because it separates two concerns that were previously coupled: network verification and network utility.

By allowing data-only hotspots, Helium can massively scale coverage without the overhead of PoC rewards. Enterprise-grade access point vendors can simply add Passpoint support and register with the Helium network. The infrastructure owner earns from data transfer fees, not from gaming location proofs. This is how you go from 62,000 hotspots to 500,000+.

The Interoperability Challenge Ahead

The question I keep coming back to is: what happens when Helium’s Solana-based settlement layer needs to interact with carrier billing systems that run on Oracle databases and RADIUS servers? Right now, Helium Mobile (the company) acts as the bridge entity. But true decentralization would mean removing that intermediary. I suspect we are 2-3 years away from a protocol-level solution for this, possibly involving something like a decentralized RADIUS implementation. That would be genuinely transformative for the DePIN space.

5

Fantastic discussion so far. I want to raise some security and trust considerations that I think are being overlooked in the excitement about carrier integrations and burn metrics.

The Security Surface of 62,000 Community Hotspots

When AT&T routes its subscribers through 62,000 community-operated Helium hotspots, the security implications are substantial. Each hotspot is a potential attack vector. Unlike carrier-controlled cell towers that sit in locked cabinets with tamper detection, Helium hotspots are consumer devices sitting in living rooms and garages. The Passpoint authentication layer secures the wireless connection itself (WPA2-Enterprise with EAP-based auth), but the underlying hardware and firmware are outside AT&T’s control.

Consider the threat model: a malicious hotspot operator could theoretically deploy modified firmware to perform traffic analysis, even if they cannot decrypt the payload. Metadata — which sites users visit, connection timing, session duration — is visible at the network layer regardless of encryption. At scale, metadata from thousands of hotspots could be aggregated to build surveillance profiles. This is not hypothetical; it is the same class of attack that Tor exit node operators have been documented performing.

Helium’s Proof-of-Coverage mechanism provides some defense against sybil attacks and fake hotspots, but HIP 130’s data-only hotspots explicitly bypass PoC. Ben raised this above as an architectural advantage for scaling. From a security perspective, it is also a significant risk expansion — data-only hotspots have fewer verification requirements but carry the same trust responsibilities.

The Trust Asymmetry Problem

There is a fundamental trust asymmetry in this model. AT&T subscribers trust AT&T with their connectivity. AT&T trusts Helium as a roaming partner. But neither the subscribers nor AT&T have direct trust relationships with the individual hotspot operators. This is the classic transitive trust problem in distributed systems, and no amount of token incentives fully solves it.

What would make me more comfortable is an on-chain attestation framework for hotspot operators — something like proof-of-hardware-integrity using TPM (Trusted Platform Module) attestation, combined with periodic security audits published as verifiable credentials. Some newer DePIN projects in the compute space are already exploring this approach.

The Positive Security Signal

That said, I will give Helium credit on one front: the move to Solana for on-chain settlement provides a transparent, auditable record of every Data Credit burn and every reward distribution. Unlike opaque carrier billing systems, anyone can verify that the economic flows match the reported metrics. This transparency is itself a security property — it makes accounting fraud significantly harder.

The $18.3M annualized revenue figure, the burn rates, the subscriber counts — these are all verifiable on-chain. Try getting that level of transparency from T-Mobile’s internal accounting systems. In that sense, DePIN telecom actually offers a security upgrade over traditional telecom’s black-box billing infrastructure.

Overall, I think Helium is growing up, not selling out. But growing up means acknowledging and addressing these security and trust gaps rather than handwaving them away with decentralization rhetoric.