HNT Surges Over 380% as America's Fastest-Growing City Turns to Helium's DePIN Network
Celina, Texas — the fastest-growing city in the U.S. by population growth rate — is routing public Wi-Fi through Helium's Solana-based DePIN network, and HNT is rallying hard off the news after a rough June.
Helium, a Solana-based decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN), is partnering with Celina, Texas — America's fastest-growing city by population growth rate — to expand connectivity infrastructure using hardware the city already owns rather than new cell towers.
A City Growing Faster Than It Can Build
Celina added more than 12,700 residents over the past year, growing 24.6% annually. That pace has outrun traditional infrastructure buildouts, pushing city planners toward faster alternatives. The city's public buildings — including the Celina Public Library and the Ralph O'Dell Senior Center — are now contributing to the Helium Network, turning existing Wi-Fi into DePIN-powered coverage for residents.
Amy Alexander, Celina's Director of Information Technology, put it plainly: the partnership "let us turn Wi-Fi we already own into coverage our residents' phones use automatically, without spending a dollar on new towers."
Helium CEO Mario Di Dio framed it as a broader model for high-growth cities: "the infrastructure cities already own can carry carrier traffic today."
The Celina deployment is currently processing roughly 100GB of data daily, with more hotspots planned. Across its full network, Helium now serves more than 2.5 million daily users and moves 104TB of data per day.
A Rough June, Then a Sharp Reversal
The partnership lands at a notable moment for Helium. Earlier this year the network absorbed real community backlash — first over Andrew Yang's Noble Mobile acquiring Helium's mobile service, then over governance proposal HIP-149, which would have cut contributor earnings. HNT fell 67% in June as that controversy played out.
The Celina announcement reversed that slide hard: HNT has surged more than 380% off its June lows, now trading around $0.73 with a $137.9M market valuation.
What This Means
A real municipal government routing public infrastructure through a DePIN network — rather than a pilot or a grant-funded trial — is a meaningfully different kind of validation than another exchange listing or partnership press release. If Celina's model holds up and other fast-growing cities take notice, it gives Helium (and DePIN broadly) a template that doesn't depend on token incentives alone: existing municipal hardware becomes network coverage, and the city saves the capex of new towers. Whether that scales beyond one Texas suburb is the open question — but for a network that was fighting its own community two months ago, it's a materially better story than the one it was telling in June.