HIP-150: Higher Earnings for Deployers, Premium Rates for High-Demand Venues

A gigabyte served inside a packed airport costs far more to deliver than a gigabyte at a small coffee shop, and carriers pay more for it. Now, so does the Helium Network.

High-value venues have to support huge numbers of devices at once and absorb sudden spikes in traffic. And when service degrades inside an airport or stadium, the carrier has a much bigger problem than it does at a typical retail location. These venues cost more to build and more to run, and carriers are willing to pay more for them. As of August 31st, following the community’s approval of  HIP-150, the Helium Network now supports a per-site reward multiplier.

When the peak is what you build for, the peak should set the rate.

Traffic at these venues doesn't spread out across the week. It arrives in a few hours and can drop off just as fast. During the week of August 24, 2026, the average day across high-value locations carried about eight times what the median day did. One concert venue on the network took in roughly a third of an entire month's rewarded data on a single night in June.

A premium deployment is built for the crowd it has to be ready for, whether or not that crowd shows up. Now the network pays for being ready.

Why a smart multiplier beats a new rate

A per-site reward multiplier increases what the network pays for a site’s rewardable data and what its deployer earns from it. It is calculated from the base rate, so when the HNT goes up, every qualified premium site changes with it. If HNT goes down, the target minimum, or floor, kicks in and Deployer earnings are protected.

The pay rate is set by Nova Labs under HIP-143, and it is $0.10 per GB as of writing. A site carrying a multiplier of 5 earns $0.50 per GB against it, and the carrier pays $0.50 for that same data.

Because Carriers pay more for data in strategic venues, the multiplier funds itself. The carrier pays more for the hardest traffic, the kind that arrives all at once in a packed venue, and that additional amount flows straight to the site that earned it, without reducing earnings elsewhere on the Network.

What the community voted for

The vote established the rules of the program and capped the multiplier at 5. Individual locations and their multipliers are handled commercially by Nova Labs based on expected traffic, deployment characteristics, and commercial agreement..

Nova Labs expects to open the program with two starting multipliers between 1 and 5, and to negotiate individual locations anywhere between 1 and the maximum based on expected traffic, density and concurrency, backhaul and radio setup, deployment complexity, and strategic value. Any venue groupings or example values are illustrations of how the program is expected to open. Final multipliers will depend on the individual location and commercial agreement.

How Multipliers Are Granted 

Multipliers are determined by Nova Labs after receiving indications of interest from carriers. Carriers determine which sites are more valuable than others, and Nova Labs takes that information and uses it to determine appropriate multipliers. Sites that are enrolled in Helium Plus are eligible to apply for multipliers. As described in HIP-150, multipliers, even once granted, are not guaranteed and are subject to reduction on thirty days’ notice or immediate revocation for program abuse.  Simply asserting a location, changing its venue type, or generating traffic does not qualify a site, and if someone abuses the program, Nova Labs has an agreement it can enforce.

Every multiplier is issued as a publicly recorded ticket, so anyone can audit which sites carry one. Multipliers apply prospectively, never retroactively. And if an access point is relocated, its multiplier returns to 1 until the new location is approved through the application process.

Raising the floor for everyone

In addition to the multiplier, HIP-150 passed two other measures: 

One raises the target minimum from 50% to 80% of what payers paid for rewardable data, for one year from activation, with a second year pre-authorized by the same vote. This is a target minimum under earnings, and it applies to rewardable data across the network, not only at premium sites. The pay rate and the target minimum are different numbers. The pay rate is the per-gigabyte price used to calculate data credit burns for rewardable data, $0.10 as of this writing. The target minimum is the share of that amount a deployer is targeted to receive. HIP-150 raises that share from 50% to 80%, moving the target minimum from $0.05 per GB to $0.08 per GB. 

The second is what pays for it. Nova Labs contributes its Service Provider Rewards to the Deployer Data Reward Pool, growing that pool from 70% to 94%. That contribution is what makes the higher target minimum possible without taking it from anywhere else.

Paying What Data Is Worth

Carriers pay differently for different venues, and the network's economics now reflect it. Premium sites are paid what their traffic is worth, every site earns against a higher floor, and both sides of every transaction move together, so the additional cost is carried by the carriers buying the data, not by other deployers. 

For high-demand venues, that makes the hardest sites worth building. Infrastructure sized for the busiest night of the year now earns like it. And for every deployer on the network, the floor just went up by more than half.

Want to learn what your sites could earn? Email business@helium.com.