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The Enron memecoin is one of the funniest I’ve seen in a long time. The at-home nuclear eggs? The stock footage corporate video spoof? The Paris Hilton co-sign? It’s all hilarious, and it’s sadly still going to zero.

Today, we’ve got Helium Mobile’s price overhaul, Solana slot times, and Helium’s vote of confidence in HNT.

Helium Mobile introduces free plan, hikes price for unlimited data

The crypto-powered cellular network Helium Mobile overhauled its pricing model for new subscribers — which formerly offered unlimited call, text and data for $20 per month.

Invite-only free plans come with 3 GB of data, 300 texts, and 100 minutes per month, $15 plans offer 10 GB of data with unlimited talk and text, and unlimited plans are now $30 per month. Legacy subscribers to the $20 per month plan can keep their existing price. It also introduced a points program to reward things like location sharing that users can redeem for gift cards. 

The moves come amid a turbulent last several months that included layoffs and an SEC lawsuit at Helium Mobile’s parent company Nova Labs.

Helium Mobile is one of the most ambitious attempts at building a decentralized physical infrastructure network — DePIN for short — a popular concept among the “crypto should do things” crowd. 

Helium Mobile comprises a network of individuals plugging in mobile hotspots to create a patchwork of what are essentially mini cell towers. Subscribers use Helium’s service where coverage is available and get T-Mobile service elsewhere. Helium Mobile rolled out its unlimited plan nationwide in the US for $20 per month in late 2023. 

$20 per month is a fraction of what legacy cell carriers charge for unlimited cellular plans, and combined with the fact that Helium Mobile must pay T-Mobile for some of the data subscribers use, it was never going to last forever. More price options are also nice for consumers — if you use less than 10 GB of data in a month, you no longer need to subsidize usage from data guzzlers.

Helium Mobile’s new free tier is a cool concept, but it’s not clear to me that it’ll find much demand — do you know anyone, particularly in the crypto world, who uses less than three gigs of data and 100 call minutes in a month? One possible target demographic could be Solana mobile phone holders, who may own the devices as second phones and wouldn’t want to pay for a second cell plan.

Coco Tang, general manager of Helium Mobile subscribers, said the free plan could also be a good option for consumers wanting to try Helium before fully making the switch.

Helium Mobile developer Nova Labs will hope the new pricing model can drive up revenue following what has been a turbulent year for the company. It laid off 36% of its staff in August, Lightspeed reported exclusively. Then a couple weeks ago, outgoing SEC Chair Gary Gensler made his last enforcement action a lawsuit against Nova Labs charging the company with fraud.

— Jack Kubinec

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Solana slot times are allegedly getting shorter:

Kamino Finance co-founder Marius Ciubotariu posted internal data on X showing how Solana slot times for the project have decreased over time. 

Slot times are the lengths of time Solana takes to produce a block — or sort of a proxy for how fast the network is. As the network becomes more technologically efficient, Solana is getting faster.

— Jack Kubinec

The Helium community has voted overwhelmingly in favor of HIP-141, a governance shift that consolidates voting power under veHNT and phases out veIOT and veMOBILE. veHNT is the voting version of HNT. This move simplifies governance, aligning the ecosystem around HNT as the single economic token while introducing a roadmap-driven governance model led by Nova Labs.

With proxy voting now in play (HIP-110), veHNT holders can delegate governance power, making participation more accessible. The Helium Foundation says it will maintain an open roadmap, with protocol upgrades requiring audited, deployable code and approval via periodic veHNT votes.

Takeaway: Following years of declining price action,Helium is streamlining governance in a way that strengthens HNT’s role, reduces fragmentation and introduces a more structured protocol development process. It feels like it’s setting the stage for more predictable upgrades — and potentially, a governance model other ecosystems might study.

— Jeffrey Albus

Permissionless IV is where ideas get stress-tested and shipped. No fluff, no filler — just code, collaboration, and pushing the limits of what’s possible. Whether you’re deep in the weeds of protocol design, launching something new, or breaking shit to make it better, Brooklyn is where it all goes down…

Oh, and if you're a developer joining the hackathon? Your ticket is on us!
Get in the room.

📅 June 22–26 | Brooklyn, NY

A message from Sam Lehman, principal at Symbolic Capital: