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I’m interested to see how crypto markets react to Trump’s inauguration, especially with the reports that he’ll issue crypto executive orders on day one. Have thoughts on the topic? Shoot me a message!

Today, we have Helium helping during Hurricane Helene, MEV revenue, and Jito’s fee switch:

Helium’s tech provided emergency cell service during Hurricane Helene

Hurricane Helene ravaged western North Carolina this fall, leading to over 100 deaths and roughly $60 billion in damage, according to a state government report. 

As the storm worsened, Nova Labs vice president of business development Mark Phillips had an idea. Helium — which is building a network of hotspots that emit wireless coverage — could repurpose its technology to provide cell connectivity in North Carolina, where more than 20% of cell sites impacted by Helene went out of service, according to an FCC report. 

Phillips messaged Helium Foundation CEO Abhay Kumar saying they should make a wireless hotspot for disaster relief. Within 48 hours, they had a prototype. Phillips and others at Nova Labs (which is the developer company behind the cell service company Helium Mobile) and Helium then began building the kits while also trying to get their hands on Starlink terminals that connect to the satellite-powered internet provider backed by Elon Musk.

Starlinks have an order backlog, but through a connection Phillips was able to secure 20 terminals within four days. Put together and plugged into a power source, Starlink and Helium’s tech create the “Helium hotspot beacon” — a miniature off-grid cell phone tower that uses Starlink for network backhaul and a Helium hotspot for radio connectivity to phones. 

Helium sent a few of these beacons to North Carolina as the state’s wireless infrastructure continued to buckle. The most widely-used deployment came in Hendersonville, NC, after an organization named Land of Sky emailed asking for a beacon. They set the hardware up in a local park, and it received more than 20,000 unique connections from locals. The beacons received around 24,000 connections in total.

Because Helium hotspots provide cell service and not just Wi-Fi, anyone within 1,000 feet of the deployment had their phones automatically connect to service like with their regular carrier, Phillips told me. 

The saga highlights a benefit of decentralized physical infrastructure, a sector referred to as DePIN in crypto circles. 

When natural disasters strike, it is possible for legacy cell carriers to deploy mini cell towers — and America’s cell phone incumbents are doing so amid the ongoing California wildfires. But those solutions are expensive and somewhat inflexible, requiring large trucks to drive around with little towers attached. 

Helium offers portable kits that are plug and play for getting cell service. If deployed widely, the hotspot beacons could make America’s wireless networks much more resilient to natural disasters.

Helium has offered ten hotspot beacon kits to the authorities in southern California, Phillips said.

— Jack Kubinec

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This June, developers, builders and innovators will come together in Brooklyn for Permissionless IV — a gathering to share ideas, collaborate and shape the onchain ecosystem.

Featuring a 36-hour hackathon, interactive workshops, and conversations with key voices in the space, Permissionless IV is all about forging connections and driving progress

📅 June 2025
📍 Brooklyn, NY

Be part of the conversations that matter.

It’s all about the MEV these days: 

As memecoin trading has largely driven up competition to land transactions on Solana, maximal extractible value — the value derived from adding, removing, or reordering transactions in a block —has come to comprise a lot more of the staking rewards validators receive for running Solana.

Issuance matters relatively less, and MEV matters relatively more to validators than this time a year ago.

— Jack Kubinec

The Jito Network is facing a pivotal governance decision: It’s using futarchy on MetaDAO to decide whether to activate the fee switch for its native token JTO. This follows a year of substantial growth, with Jito Tips surging from $3M in December 2023 to $126M one year later — a 42x increase.

JIP-10 proposes including JTO alongside JitoSOL as economic security in the TipRouter NCN, decentralizing tip distribution while boosting network resilience. If adopted, JTO stakers would earn 0.15% of tips, or approximately $3.65M annually at November 2024 levels, with the DAO treasury's share slightly reduced to 2.7%.

Takeaway: For everyday users, this decision could mean smoother operations and stronger security for Solana’s infrastructure. For those staking JTO, it’s a chance to earn rewards from the booming tip economy while contributing to the further decentralization of the network.

— Jeffrey Albus

A message from Ian Unsworth, co-founder of Kairos Research: