Critique on Helium’s $6.5K monthly revenue causes a stir

cointelegraph.com:

A recent critique from author and entrepreneur Liron Shapira on the Helium blockchain project has caused a strong debate over the long-term prospects of the company.

Founded in 2013, Helium is an Internet of Things (IoT)focused blockchain that is building a decentralized peer-to-peer wireless telecommunications network via its own machine networking tech.

In a Twitter thread from July 26, Shapira, a heavy critic of Web3, questioned the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of investment into Helium.

He pointed to data suggesting that the project makes just $6,500 per month from its data usage revenue, and stated that the “complete lack of end-user demand for Helium should not have come as a surprise.” He also referenced recent posts from node hotspot operators in the Helium subreddit who were posted about the dwindling rewards from their efforts.

“On average, they spent $400-800 to buy a hotspot. They were expecting $100/month, enough to recoup their costs and enjoy passive income. Then their earnings dropped to only $20/mo,” he said.

.@Helium, often cited as one of the best examples of a Web3 use case, has received $365M of investment led by @a16z.Regular folks have also been convinced to spend $250M buying hotspot nodes, in hopes of earning passive income.The result? Helium's total revenue is $6.5k/month pic.twitter.com/PyW6KPllvc

In a follow up interview with Tactical Investing on July 28, Shapira expanded on his comments, and even went as far as to accuse the project of being a “Ponzi-scheme”:

As part of Helium’s wireless network structure, node operators receive 35% of data usage revenue as rewards in the HNT token for validation transactions. To be able to run a node, people also need to purchase and install one of