Table of Contents
- Overview
- Role
- Problem
- Goal
- Solution
- User Testing & Adoption
- Challenges and Learnings
- Shutdown Notice
- Final Thoughts
- Video Interview
Overview
Helium Staking was a custodial validator pool for the Helium blockchain, enabling users to participate with as little as 1 HNT. At its peak, the platform managed over 530,000 HNT (~$13.25 million USD) across 53 validators and served over 15,000 users, making it the second-largest partial staking pool in the ecosystem.
👨💼 Role
Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Responsibilities included:
- Product and platform architecture
- Backend and frontend development
- Security design for wallet and reward systems
- CLI tools for automation
- Validator monitoring infrastructure (Grafana + Prometheus)
❓ Problem
Helium’s validator requirement of 10,000 HNT created a high barrier to entry for small holders. No easy-to-use, trusted platform existed to allow smaller users to participate and earn rewards without deep technical knowledge or capital.
🎯 Goal
- Democratize staking for users with less than 10,000 HNT
- Offer daily compounding, flexible unstaking, and full transparency
- Maintain maximum security for user funds
- Provide seamless validator deployment and reward distribution
✨ Solution
💼 Custodial Model Explained
Helium Staking used a custodial architecture:
- When a user joined, we generated an internal HNT wallet for them.
- They first transferred their HNT into that internal wallet.
- From there, they manually transferred funds to our central pool wallet.
This step was essential, because:
- Validators could only be started by wallets holding the full 10,000 HNT.
- Rewards from the Helium blockchain were deposited only into the validator wallet.
- In order to calculate and fairly redistribute rewards to all pool participants, we needed full control over validator wallets and the staking flow.
Reward redistribution was performed daily, with the option for users to compound their earnings automatically.
⚙️ Platform Features
- ✅ Daily rewards & compounding
- 🔁 Flexible unstaking (based on pool liquidity)
- 👥 Referral system
- 🔐 2FA and IP-based security for sensitive actions
- 📊 Grafana + Prometheus for monitoring
- ⚙️ Custom CLI tools to:
- Auto-deploy new validators when liquidity thresholds were reached
- Batch update validator software when required
📱 User Experience
- Clear dashboards for tracking rewards, stake, referrals
- Wallet management tools
- Notifications on rewards and compounding
- Simple, clean UI built in AngularJS
🧪 User Testing & Adoption
- 15,000+ registered users
- 530,000 HNT staked across 53 validators
- CLI tools reduced admin work and errors significantly
- Real-time monitoring caught issues before downtime occurred
⚙️ Challenges and Learnings
-
Custodial Security
Managing funds and private keys responsibly was our #1 concern. We implemented IP restrictions, 2FA, and strict access policies. -
Real-Time Reward Accounting
Fairly redistributing rewards across thousands of partial stakers each day required robust and fast reward calculators. -
Automation = Survival
Without our CLI tools, managing 53+ validators would have been chaos. Automation was key. -
Uptime is Everything
Grafana and Prometheus were vital for uptime, log analysis, and debugging under pressure.
🚫 Shutdown Notice
Due to HIP70, the Helium blockchain migrated to Solana, and validators were deprecated.
As a result, the Helium Staking platform was shut down on January 31, 2023.
We announced the shutdown publicly and supported users via our Discord community.
✨ Final Thoughts
- 💡 Custodial models require trust + transparency.
- ⚙️ Automation saves lives (and dev sanity).
- 📣 Community trust earned us 15K+ users organically.
- 🔐 Reward fairness and wallet security were our top technical challenges — and we nailed them.