Full Hotspots
Full Hotspots are Helium coverage providers that can participate in all potential reward activity available to Hotspots. Compared to a Data Only Hotspots, Full Hotspots are eligible for Proof-of-Coverage Rewards.
Full Hotspots may only be manufactured by approved Makers. These are hardware vendors that have been approved by the Helium community and the Helium Foundation. This process is governed via Helium Improvement Proposal 19 (HIP19).
Approved Makers
Helium, Inc. was the first Hotspot manufacturer. Starting in early 2019, they produced the first hardware capable of mining HNT and providing LoRaWAN wireless coverage. In total, Helium, Inc. produced and sold the first 13,000 Hotspots to the Helium community to seed the Network.
Since the introduction of HIP19, additional approved Makers have been added. Each approved Maker is given a unique onboarding address on the Helium blockchain where they are required to burn data credits to onboard their unique Hotspots before they are granted access to the blockchain.