Helium

13-July: Helium is legit, I'm not sure is it gonna be having an ICO. 

8-September: Stopped by the Helium offices in San Francisco to check out their gateway devices in person. One of the few blockchain companies integrating hardware and software in a way that makes sense. We will be publishing a project report on the project later this year. 

Overall, Helium is a good project and we believe the team is more than capable to handle the physical aspect of the project. We are not so certain they can tackle all the aspects involving blockchain implementation and deployment, as they do not have many team members that have blockchain experience. This is an all star team regarding the physical infrastructure and tech part they are trying to build, but regarding the blockchain development part they somewhat lack expertise.
The technology they are trying to build is disruptive in its essence and we believe that the fact that they have an already established company with numerous partnerships will help them be able to stick to the development plan and deliver a great product in time. This is a very solid project with a bright future ahead.

There is a high competition on IoT market. Integration with an exsisting IoT is the most important.

With the introduction of a blockchain, Helium brings decentralization into an industry currently controlled by monopolies. The result is that in future wireless network coverage becomes a commodity, fueled by competition, rather than monopoly, available anywhere in the world, at a fraction of current costs. But gateways will slow down the network deployment.

There is no public financial information. It is assumed that ICO would be in Q4 2018. However, Helium has raised equity funding from some Venture Capital firms including GV (formerly Google Ventures), Khosla Ventures, FirstMark Capital, HSB/MunichRe Ventures and others. That is a great signal for further investors. However, we always should take into account, that the price for this VC firm on seed stage could be completely different from the price for ICO investors.

Helium generates utility tokes, which would be a mean of exchange within the ecosystem. As a result, the value of tokens directly connected with the usage of tokens. Moreover, the project will have the revenue stream from selling their Gateways. Online pre-orders will be announced in the near future. Gateways will be offered at $495. That price could be too high for fast network development.

The most part of the current team has joined in Dec 2017 - Jan 2018. There are 94 employees in Helium Inc. and Helium System Inc. The connection between companies is unclear.

Market Competitive environment:
A very competitive space with well funded and strong decentralization advocates, influencers, and dev teams already working on IoT-blockchain projects.
In the aspect of the IoT project is a direct competitor of the:
ITC (raised $ 23,5 mln in the ICO, capitalization - $ 20,4 mln, ROI USD - 0,71x)
IoTeX (raised $ 14 mln during the ICO, capitalization - $20,6 mln, ROI USD - 2,58x)
IOTA – in the course of ICO 1,337 BTC was raised, capitalization - $2,5 billion, ROI USD - 2260x
In the aspect of the bandwidth sharing:
RightMesh (raised $ 30M, capitalization is not available);
MXC (raised $ 24M, capitalisation is not available)

Technological advantages:
Helium is successfully operating on the IoT market since 2013;
Network will use WHIP, which is impowed LPWAN protocol;
Gateways are incentivised for their work;
Users can specify prices for their internet bandwidth;

SOCIAL ACTIVITY
The project popularity in the social networks and discussion forums
The project is detected on the radar of the next influencers: Ian Balina, Crypto Calibur.
Facebook: 932 followers, the average number of likes per post is 3, the average number of comments per post is 0, user activity is low.
Twitter: 2,4k followers, average number of likes per post is 11, average number of retweets per post is 5, average number of comments under the post is 1, user activity is low.
Instagram: 108 subscribers, average number of likes per post is 20, average number of comments under the post is 1, user activity is low.
Youtube: 232 subscribers, average number of views per video is 200, average number of comments under each video is 0, user activity is low.
Reddit: 108 followers, average number of comments under the post 0, user activity is low.
Telegram: 9,4k members, user activity is low