As the new year looms right around the corner, it’s time again for us to take stock of the year that was. In 2022, MNTD. matured even more both as a brand and as a community. But in anything we do, our mission is to make crypto-hardware accessible to everyday people.
This year, we’re most proud to have learned from past mistakes. Following several months of frustration over bot traffic hijacking our drops, which left many customers unable to make purchases, we came up with a unique solution of our own. MNTD. created a drop queue system that gave everyone a fair chance at getting a hotspot, while also filtering out bad bot traffic. This alone is a huge win in the crypto space. Alongside that, we’ve also been able to ensure complete shipment of all orders, unlike many other players in the Helium ecosystem with huge backlogs.
Our growth in 2022 also led to some significant turning points. From unveiling the world’s first everything-in-one Helium 5G Hotspot to launching the official MNTD. mobile app, we made some great leaps in evolving the MNTD. product line beyond our flagship Helium hotspots. And as always, the driving force behind our progress is still the MNTD. and the Helium community at large.
Let’s look back to some of our milestones as a community:
- Our MNTD. VIP Discord Community grew to 6.8K members.
- Many new open-source projects that utilize tokenomics and infrastructure are now gaining traction in the field. Among the pioneers include Hivemapper, Dor Technologies, and Dimo.
- The new Helium 5G network — and new Helium cryptocurrencies — is now in operation. This has led to new tokenomics and positively impacts the security and usability of the Helium Network overall.
- The Helium 5G Mapper will allow people to map the new Helium 5G Network. It uses the LoRaWAN network to transmit mapping data, which helps increase network usage.
- The Helium team split into two entities: NovaLabs — which focuses on further developing the Network — and the Helium Foundation, which helps maintain the already established LoRaWAN® network.
- People are able to earn more HNT with only about 54% of hotspots online. This may be interpreted as a drawback, but some hotspots going offline allow the Network to reach an equilibrium in terms of token mining.
Besides these technical breakthroughs, the Helium community has also grown significantly offline, with several major events that have allowed members to actively participate and get educated on Network projects and activities. This includes the Helium House events that took place in Austin, Texas and NYC; the Solana Breakpoint crypto event, which allowed creators in the Solana ecosystem to learn more about Helium; the all-day Helium Train Hackathon that featured Helium’s country-wide coverage in Portugal, and the Helium in the Wild event, which demonstrated the Helium Foundation’s commitment to building the IoT network and made use of RAKwireless-sponsored Helium Mappers.
All the progress made in 2022 leaves the coming year with big shoes to fill. In 2023, MNTD. is set to fully launch our all-in-one 5G device, which will be able to connect to multiple networks, including Helium. And in an effort to bridge Network users with Network builders, we’ll also be introducing some friends of MNTD. who are set to be pioneers in the Web3 space.
