> This is either decentralized in name only or vulnerable to Sybil attacks.
The Helium network does a variety of things to mitigate sybil attacks by requiring/incentivizing geographic distance between the routers.
There are other proof-of-coverage systems where all of your criticisms would apply, such as MXC (the hotspot version, not the exchange) as they do allow individuals to just hoard a bunch of hotspots in one place and try to earn, reducing the health of the network. You should reserve your judgements for the ones doing it wrong and compare it to the ones doing it right or at least differently.
It sounds like the thing they actually do is have a centralized architecture with one entity issuing miner private keys for $40 each. It’s DINO (decentralized in name only)
so the point of decentralization pushes is for the censorship resistance. if helium organization went away today, there would still be 192,000 nodes that still get to function and perpetuate the network.
so basically, nobody cares about that particular area of centralization and it allows for vetted hardware that meets some additional standards to come onto the network (at one point they didn't gatekeep and allowed any hardware).
> so basically, nobody cares about that particular area of centralization
except for anyone who cares about cryptosystems actually being cryptographically secure and decentralized instead of just serving as a thin excuse to drive hype.
> I think this role can go away though.
The eternal refrain of shitcoins is “I think we can fix this later”. That never seems to end up being correct.
The Helium network does a variety of things to mitigate sybil attacks by requiring/incentivizing geographic distance between the routers.
There are other proof-of-coverage systems where all of your criticisms would apply, such as MXC (the hotspot version, not the exchange) as they do allow individuals to just hoard a bunch of hotspots in one place and try to earn, reducing the health of the network. You should reserve your judgements for the ones doing it wrong and compare it to the ones doing it right or at least differently.