What is a Light Hotspot?
Light Hotspots are the evolution of how LoRaWAN gateways will interact with the Helium blockchain. Since the genesis block, the Helium blockchain has run entirely on the physical Hotspot itself. As the blockchain network grows, each Hotspot running a full node undergoes increasing load and are starting to fall out of sync due to the higher compute requirements.
To mitigate this, the Hotspot’s consensus work will be moved off of physical Hotspots and onto Validators. This will simplify the architecture immensely, an enable us to grow the Network exponentially while keeping blocktimes and epochs stable.
As all approved Hotspots transition to a Light Hotspot architecture, we also introduce a new type of Hotspot known as Data Only Hotspots to satisfy the increasing demand and continue to expand network coverage
Development Milestones
Free Packet Forwarding
Target Completion Date: March 18
Status: COMPLETE
Milestone 1.5
Add Hotspot to Blockchain
Target Completion: June
Status: IN DEVELOPMENT
Milestone 2
Earn HNT For Device Packet Transfer
Target Completion: Summer 2021
Status: NOT YET STARTED
Milestone 3
Introduction of Light Hotspots
Target Completion: Post Milestone 2
Status: NOT YET STARTED
Milestone 4
All Approved Hotspots Operate as Light Hotspots
Target Completion: Post Milestone 3
Status: NOT YET STARTED
