Helium’s Frank Mong: Building Out DePIN’s First Big Success Story

As (literally) a thousand DePIN projects bloomed in 2024, they could thank one decentralized physical infrastructure network in particular for showing the way: Helium. The original DePIN (before DePIN was a word), Helium was started by Amir Haleem, Shawn Fanning, and Sean Carey all the way back in 2013. It took until 2019 for the team to deploy IoT hotspots, allowing users to share wireless coverage and earn tokens.Of course, it’s harder to deploy hardware to people’s homes than it is to issue a memecoin on Pump.Fun. And as chief operating officer at Helium for the last seven years, Frank Mong has seen the struggle to deploy hardware up close. There are now more than 350,000 Helium hotspots deployed in 80-some countries.

“You have hurdles of building physical products and that’s everything from structures to electronics,” Mong said. “And those take time. And I think in the early days of Helium, at least for me, seven plus years ago, I recall that even when we do build a network, it takes time for things to be built physically to use that network.”Mong says it’s “very gratifying” to see so many DePINs come to life this year (1,300 is one estimate). “We’re seeing new companies come out this year in 2024 with all kinds of ideas and use cases for Helium’s economic model to really power through real-life physical infrastructure. It is quite amazing to see,” he said.

Mong particularly likes mapping as a DePIN category and recommends that people watch Hivemapper.

Helium Mobile has 100,000 subscribers and the company is making money by onboarding customers from regular mobile providers, acting as an extra network inside buildings in cities like New York City, Miami and Los Angeles. Helium launched on its own blockchain before switching to Solana in 2023.

Mong hails from the Tenderloin in Downtown San Francisco, which he calls “the slums of the city.”

Helium continues to deploy at a lightning rate. In Portugal, its hotspots form parts of smart cities and smart utilities. U.S. Pacific Gas and Electric is using Helium for wildfire detection, and the U.S. Geological Survey uses the network for flood detection in Madison, Wisconsin. Nova Labs (the company that created the open-source tech) also has a beta test underway with Telefonica in Mexico to provide hotspots in certain neighborhoods, showing how Helium, and DePIN, is increasingly becoming part of real infrastructure.

Mong says it’s a long road, but worth the struggle. “The initial part is taking that leap. You have to just jump off the cliff and believe that you’re going to land safely. That’s probably the hardest part. Once you do it, the journey is amazing,” he said.

“Just realize that it’s going to take a long time. Physical products take time to iterate and you have to have the patience to enjoy the journey.”Looking forward to 2025, he adds: “I hope that the innovation of crypto software continues to thrive and continues to grow. Along the way, I hope responsible actors show up and come to a table with real useful products and services for consumers.”

This profile is part of CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2024 package. For all of this year’s nominees, click here.