5G Mining and MOBILE Rewards

Several factors contribute to how much MOBILE a 5G Hotspot will earn over a given period, there are some higher-level concepts, design elements, and rules to keep in mind that will help better explain what you might earn and why. This section covers these, as well as some mining and token reward basics.

How To Mine MOBILE

Mining MOBILE and providing 5G coverage requires a 5G Hotspot and one or more compatible CBRS Small Cell Radios. These components can be purchased as a bundle or separately. All 5G Hotspots must be online and registered in the SAS (Spectrum Access System) maintained by the FCC to earn MOBILE rewards.

More than one Small Cell Radio can be connected to a single 5G Hotspot to create a larger 5G coverage area. 5G Hotspots can support as many Small Cell Radios as would saturate their bandwidth.

Note that connecting more than one Small Cell Radio will require an additional networking switch. Refer to the 5G Hotspot Maker installation guides for specific instructions.

Installation and Setup Guides

Instructions on installing a CBRS Small Cell Radio and registration with the SAS are provided by the individual 5G Hotspot Makers.

For FreedomFi Gateways refer to the installation guides here:

For Bobcat500 Gateways refer to the Bobcat Knowledge Center:

Bobcat Knowledge Center CBRS Radio Troubleshooting Guide

warning

Misrepresentation of CBRS Radio installation information, including GPS location, height, antenna orientation or other characteristics in a SAS is a violation of FCC regulations and may result in fines and/or criminal penalties.

Access Gateway and Radio Dashboards

Once the 5G Hotspot is onboarded and a Small Cell Radio is physically installed, the Small Cell Radio will automatically initialize and acquire a GPS lock. Once that is complete, the Small Cell Radio dashboard appears under the "Radio Dashboard" tab on the local IP address of the 5G Hotspot.

If you are using a FreedomFi gateway, you can access the miner and radio dashboard via the URL: http://freedomfi-gateway.local/
If you are using a Bobber 500 gateway, you can access the miner and radio dashboard via this URL: http://bobber-gateway.local/

5G Hotspot will appear on explorer.helium.com within 5 days, depending on how quickly it is registered in the SAS.

Install the Helium Wallet App to Manage HNT/MOBILE Token

A 5G Hotspot with an attached and properly registered Small Cell Radio will start earning MOBILE automatically once the 5G rewards are activated on the Helium Blockchain.

tip

Be sure to update the Helium Wallet app to the latest version. More information can be found on the #announcements channel in Helium Discord

How 5G Hotspots Earn Helium MOBILE Tokens

The Helium Blockchain rewards 5G Hotspots for providing 5G wireless coverage and verifying the Helium Network. 5G Hotspots are rewarded in the Helium MOBILE Token.

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During the Genesis Period, 5G Hotspots will begin to earn MOBILE by reporting their status via a “heartbeat”, an automatic process of reporting to the Helium Blockchain that the Small Cell Radio is online and registered with the SAS.

Genesis is the period during which Hotspot owners will be rewarded for providing 5G coverage with pre-mined MOBILE tokens. MOBILE tokens will be redeemable for HNT after the Genesis period ends.

Once a 5G Hotspot is completely deployed, you as the owner are not required to do anything else to earn MOBILE. Your 5G Hotspot will perform all of its activities on its own and will be rewarded for maintaining a valid connection to the SAS.

Emissions Curve

There will be a max supply of 250B (billion) MOBILE with issuance halvenings of every 2 years aligned with the HNT issuance halvenings. The first halving will occur on August 1, 2023, to align with HNT halving and will continue on a 2-year cycle afterward. This creates a "stub period" as defined by HIP 53: Mobile subDAO which will begin when normal emissions of MOBILE tokens begin (and MOBILE can be redeemed by HNT in the subDAO's treasury). The date for this is currently TBD and dependent on core developers implementing the HNT token treasury and redemption transactions on the Helium Blockchain. This is defined as Phase 2 of HIP 51: Helium DAO for all new subDAOs.

Before normal emissions of MOBILE begin, HIP 51: Helium DAO defined an earlier launch of MOBILE tokens assigning a premine amount of MOBILE to the Helium Foundation. The Helium Foundation will work with the core developers to begin the Genesis period of MOBILE rewards. Genesis rewards will be paid out of the Foundation's pre-mined MOBILE rewards pool. Read more about the pre-mine distribution here.

Currently, the Helium Foundation intends to issue 100M (million) tokens per day in the Genesis period, and it will be proportionally distributed to all active 5G Small Cell Radios as described below.

Small Cell Radio Reward Scaling

All properly installed and registered 5G Hotspots will earn rewards for participating on the Network. A rewards unit multiple is applied to the various Small Cell Radio models based on whether they are indoor or outdoor, as well as their power output, as follows:

Small Cell Radio Type	Reward Weight
High-Power Outdoor*	4.0x
Outdoor	2.5x
Indoor	1.0x

*Currently, the only High-Power Outdoor Radio is the Baicells Nova436H

Individual rewards per period are calculated as a proportion of the total weighted reward units.

Earnings Example

Earnings are calculated in 3 steps

Calculate the Total Emissions Weight and Emissions Weight Ratio for each Small Cell Radio Type
Each Small Cell Radio Type is allocated its ratio of the total rewards in the given epoch
Each 5G Hotspot is proportionally rewarded from its respective rewards pool by Small Cell Radio Type

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As an example, we can calculate the rewards for a 5G Hotspot in a single epoch assuming the following (the below numbers are examples and may not reflect actual deployed 5G Hotspots today):

100,000,000 MOBILE Rewarded per day
150 High-Power Outdoor 5G Hotspots earn rewards
800 Outdoor 5G Hotspots earn rewards
1,400 Indoor 5G Hotspots earn rewards
1 Small Cell Radio per 5G Hotspot (in real-world usage, multiple Small Cell Radios can be connected to a 5G Hotspot)

Total Rewards Units for Epoch

Calculate the Total Reward Points for a given epoch, by using the Reward Weight for each Small Cell Radio type.

In this example, the total rewards Points per epoch is 4,000 and the ratios are as follows:

  High-Power Outdoor Count (  150) * 4.0    =>      600   =>  0.15
+            Outdoor Count (  800) * 2.5    =>  + 2,000   =>  0.50
+             Indoor Count (1,400) * 1.0    =>  + 1,400   =>  0.35
-----------------------------------------       --------
                                                  4,000

Earnings per Small Cell Radio

Each Small Cell Radio is allocated its rewards based on the reward weight of the model.

Small Cell Reward = Daily Rewards * Reward Weight / Count of Small Cell Type

High-Power Outdoor  => 100,000,000 * 0.15 /   150 = 100,000 MOBILE per day
           Outdoor  => 100,000,000 * 0.50 /   800 =  62,500 MOBILE per day
            Indoor  => 100,000,000 * 0.35 / 1,400 =  25,000 MOBILE per day