The Rise and Fall of the Syncrobit Helium Miner

Syncrobit has gone out of business. They were struggling at the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, and it seems like they decided to pack up and depart rather than work to get back into the business of selling Synchrobit Helium miners. There is not a lot of information online about the company in the past year or so, but their website no longer has any products listed, and there is a smattering of online forums where people have posted negative reviews implying that the company is no longer responding to emails or keeping their products up and running. 

This article will cover what happened to Syncrobit, as well as the pros and cons of Helium outsourcing the construction of their miners, as well as what it is they do!

The Synchrobit Helium Miner

There are not any products on the Syncrobit Helium miner store, and it does not appear that there are any new miners on the market. Some people are selling used miners on websites like eBay and Mercari, but we advise against purchasing a used Helium miner like the Syncrobit Helium miner. Syncrobit emerged as one of the many companies that sold Helium miners when the decision was made to let third-party companies start creating and selling Helium miners. A lot of those companies are doing well today and providing high-quality Helium miners to customers, but the supply chain issues at the beginning of 2022 caused every one of those companies a lot of trouble. 

That supply chain issue came at a particularly bad time for Helium miner companies because Helium had ramped up in popularity and there was a large uptick in the demand for miners right when the supply started to dwindle. Unfortunately, a number of Helium mining companies were less than perfect in the way they handled that time, and Synchrobit is no exception. By not refunding their customers and remaining vague about shipping times and customer support, they struggled in the middle of the supply chain issues. It does not appear that they ever recovered. 

User Reviews

Synchrobit, it appears, has gone out of business. Reviews on Reddit describe a company that was shady during the past few years and one of the most recent posts describes the fact that the company wasn’t refunding their customers when their products didn’t ship and had pretty much shut down their online operations across every sector. They have not posted any new updates since October 2021, and although their website is still operational, there are not any products in their store. 

The user reviews of the Synchrobit Helium miner were not very positive, either. Across all brands, there is trouble with Helium miners no longer connecting to the network. The connection of the Helium miner to the Helium network is generally handled by the company that produced the miner and is notoriously hard to troubleshoot. Synchrobit Helium miners faced that problem when they were operational, but now, without support from the company, it is unlikely that there are many miners still running. Unless you are interested in the hardware of their miner do not purchase a used Synchrobit miner from the web. It appears that, even during their time when they were selling working miners, the company was not perfect either. 

Performance and Reliability

During their time, Synchrobit miners were not known for their reliability. Based on a variety of user reviews, Synchrobit Helium miners were prone to malfunctioning even when the company was still operational. With Helium miners, a lot of the performance is similar across the many models. When they are mining, they are connecting over the proof of coverage system as well as transferring data along the network, letting the user enjoy rewards for as far as their network is spread. It does not appear like any one miner has emerged over all the others as the definitive miner for Helium mining in terms of performance. 

When setting up a Helium miner, it is important to set it up in the best location within your home for it to spread its network in the surrounding area. It should be on your upper floor and enjoy a nice view out of a window. Its ability to spread out a network is limited by its antenna, and a lot of the models have opted into similar antennas to complement their miners, but the best antenna is attached to the roof of your home because they command a view of the surrounding area and are as high up as you can get. 

Third-Party Helium Mining Companies

A few years ago, Helium started outsourcing the construction of its miners. Their network runs through a series of hotspots all throughout the world, with each hotspot connecting the network like so many threads on a tapestry. This has some good and some bad effects. It allows them to outsource the ideation, design, and manufacturing of their miners, allowing them to focus entirely on the upkeep and growth of their network (and future projects). It does, however, take away some of the confidence that customers have in the quality of their products. Especially in the latter half of 2022, when so many companies struggled with supply chain issues. 

Healthy Competition to Create the Best Helium Miners

One of the big benefits of moving all Helium miner production to third-party companies is that they are all competing to create a Helium miner that performs well, is reliable, and can be sold for a good price. That, of course, needs to be coupled with a company that has good customer service and business practices. This is extra important due to the shady practices that have surrounded Helium mining in the past. There are many unfortunate stories about users who had bad experiences with these companies. They either ran into problems with the supply chain issues or received products that began to malfunction, but received little support from the company after that. 

Fortunately, there are a lot of companies out there that are doing good work and are working hard every day to show themselves as a company worthy of trust once more. With Helium rolling out its 5G network, companies are racing to manufacture and sell new models of Helium miners that will function well on the new network as well as the old. So far, it seems like a lot of the Helium miners have pretty similar stats and a pretty similar cost. When looking for a company where you can purchase a Helium miner, check out some of the best Helium miners on the market to make the right decision. 

Not all Companies are Created Equal

Unfortunately, for every company that has done well to create Helium miners, there are companies that have not. Scams plague the Helium miner industry, and there are companies that have shut down due to their unreliable business. Synchrobit is one of these companies. Synchrobit Helium miners were on the market for some time and, while the company was operational, they worked fairly well. Sure, there were reliability problems and difficulties connecting to the Helium network, but those problems were not limited to Synchrobit. 

What makes companies like Synchrobit fail is (well, a variety of reasons) but one is a lack of customer service. If these companies are not able to provide assistance for their customers when their models are in need of troubleshooting, or worse, promise assistance and never give it, their customers are quick to take up their grievances on public platforms and review sites. Searching online reveals a wide variety of comments and warnings against using Synchrobit Helium miners, and their dependency on the parent company means that, now, they are not able to be used. 

Companies like Synchrobit are all too common, and they have created an environment where not all Helium miner companies are created equal. There are companies that are not entirely trustworthy, and there are companies that are, in fact, working to create quality products that will mine reliably on Helium’s worldwide network.  Another problem with the companies making Helium miners is the lack of regulation of the whole thing. Helium is so new that some of the regulations aren’t yet in place, letting certain companies take advantage of the lack of regulation and survive for a little while selling shoddy products or scamming customers. 

Extra Precautions When Purchasing a Helium Miner

That lack of regulations in place means that you must take extra precautions before you purchase a Helium miner. There are those out there, be they companies or people selling used miners, that are, in essence, trying to scam the unknowing into purchasing their miners. This is lessening as time goes on and those companies go out of business, but the biggest factor is that there are reliable companies out there that have been in business for years. Companies like Nebra, Rak, Bobcat, and others. 

The emergence of companies that you can trust is a huge step in the continuation of Helium’s network. Do not fall victim to Helium miner deals that seem too good to be true. LoRaWAN miners are around $500, data-only miners are cheaper at around $300, and 5G miners are bound to be more expensive at around $1,000. Before you make any purchase of a Helium miner, check reviews online, especially recent ones, to gauge the overall satisfaction of Helium miners all over the world. 

An Overview of Helium

Are you looking to get into Helium mining? It may be nice to know — Helium is doing something good on its end as well. Helium, when it was founded in 2013, tried to work without crypto. Their original plan was to make a long-range decentralized network for the internet of things, but they struggled for years to get their company off the ground. People just weren’t interested.

They were not able to get the network off the ground until 2017 when they switched their rewards system to what it is now. They created a crypto-driven system where you get out what you put in. Miners that are working on overdrive are also mining the most HNT. Barring extraneous circumstances, starting to mine HNT is as simple as putting up the device, placing the antenna in a good position, and waiting while the rewards rollrolled in. 

Mining on the People’s Network

It is easy to become a part of Helium’s network. Once you purchase a miner (from a reliable site!) and set it up you can start mining HNT while your miner is contributing to Helium’s network of devices. Helium hotspot miners all work together to project a network that is expansive and strong enough to handle all the data that’s passing through it. There are three major ways your miner makes HNT day in and day out. 

• It can transfer data.  This is what the network has set out to accomplish. The more data that your miner transfers on the network, the more HNT it will mine. 
• It can take part in a proof of coverage. This is where the most rewards are found, and it happens every time your miner verifies that it is, in fact, still running, as well as when it checks in on a nearby miner. 
• It can verify the challenge, which is when it looks in on two other miners that are doing a challenge to make sure that there is nothing untoward going on. 

The proof of coverage-related rewards is a large percentage of the rewards that Helium gives out, and that is because Helium’s network is bound to fluctuate between strength and coverage as people are setting up and taking down their miners. The rewards in a given area are split among all of the miners present in that area. 

Maximize Helium Miner Profitability

Those factors combine with a few others to output the total amount of your Helium miner’s productivity. One of the main factors that dictate your Helium miner’s profitability is your location. If you live in an area that has dozens of miners then the rewards are split among all those miners. 

The other major factor in your Helium miner’s profitability — itsit’s area of coverage. Miners work with radio frequency, and their reach also plays a role in how much HNT they earn. This one, at least, has a pretty simple effect on earnings. The larger your miner’s reach, the more interactions it can do and the more HNT it will make. You want to place your Helium miner in the best position in order to maximize its range and, through that, maximize its earnings. 

Most miners come with (or require) an antenna to operate. You want to place that antenna as high as possible to cover the most area. This could be as simple as sticking it to a top-floor window or if you are feeling inspired, you can purchase an outdoor model, an outdoor antenna, or machine a weatherproof casing to house your Helium miner. Another plus for earning HNT is that more miners clustered together do not correlate to more earnings. You can operate as many hotspots as you want, but they should be at least 400 or so meters apart or their efficiency will go way down. 

Is it Time to Buy a Helium Miner?

There are pros and cons of buying a Helium miner and joining Helium’s worldwide decentralized network. Helium outputs a real product that is used by people every day. They are creating a place where, hopefully soon, users can use data at much lower costs than traditional wireless networks, while resting easy knowing that their data is secure. The network’s decentralization means that each player has a small stake in the company. 

Up to this point, Helium’s incentives are more than enough to bring curious people into their project. It is a big project. They are trying to create a successful business to transfer data on the internet of things as well as a 5G network and create a network that is strong enough and covers enough to be a real choice for a wireless network. Helium is much more than another crypto company. Users mining on their network are spreading their company's reach and bringing them closer to their goal, one hotspot at a time. 

There is always the possibility that Helium’s network will grow exponentially larger in the coming years, and if that is the case, you will be rewarded big time as all of your mined HNT goes up in value. In the end, the choice is yours! This project could lead to something really exciting or it could flop and fail.