Verify a decision

{"actor":"system:backfill","investigation_id":"f145b6a3-7c14-47bc-a047-8fb0ab67e449","kind":"publish","page_slug":"helius","published_at":"2026-06-01T13:01:17.145Z","sequence_num":1,"snapshot":{"content_type":"investigation","entity_name":"Helius","sections":[{"content":"Helius was founded in June 2022 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. The company operates helius.dev and provides Solana-native developer infrastructure including RPC node access, enhanced transaction parsing APIs, real-time webhooks, the Digital Asset Standard (DAS) API for NFT and token queries, gRPC-based data streaming via LaserStream, and Validator-as-a-Service offerings. As of late 2024, the company reported serving over 25,000 hSOL liquid staking holders and processing more than 8 billion daily RPC requests. The company holds no publicly issued token. Helius is recognized within the Solana developer ecosystem as the leading Solana-only RPC and API provider, with a self-described market position of powering more than 90% of Solana teams' infrastructure needs. Clients named publicly include Coinbase, Paxos, Ledger, Jupiter, Helium, Hivemapper, Backpack, Solflare, Squads, and Crossmint.","heading":"Company Overview","severity":"low","sources":[{"credibility":1,"name":"Helius Official Website","type":"official","url":"https://www.helius.dev/"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Helius Series B Funding Announcement — Helius Blog","type":"official","url":"https://www.helius.dev/blog/funding-announcement"},{"credibility":2,"name":"What Is Helius? Complete Guide — Backpack Exchange","type":"news_article","url":"https://learn.backpack.exchange/articles/what-is-helius"}]},{"content":"Helius was co-founded by three engineers who met while studying Applied Mathematics and Computing and Communications Engineering at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. Mert Mumtaz (CEO) is a Turkish-Canadian entrepreneur who previously worked as a software engineer at Coinbase and earlier at BlackBerry and Shutterstock. Liam Vovk (CTO) and Nicolas Pennie (COO) both held software engineering roles at Amazon Web Services prior to co-founding Helius. All three founders are publicly identified with verified professional histories and maintain active public profiles. Mert Mumtaz is also a prominent commentator on the Solana ecosystem on X (formerly Twitter), where he operates the account @0xMert_. The founders' real-world identities and professional backgrounds are fully disclosed and corroborated by multiple independent sources, representing a positive trust signal relative to pseudonymous or anonymous crypto teams.","heading":"Founding Team and Leadership","severity":"low","sources":[{"credibility":2,"name":"Mert Mumtaz — IQ.wiki","type":"research","url":"https://iq.wiki/wiki/mert-mumtaz"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Helius Raises $3.1M Seed — Decrypt","type":"news_article","url":"https://decrypt.co/112175/helius-seed-raise-solana-app-building"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Helius Raises $12.8M CAD Series A — BetaKit","type":"news_article","url":"https://betakit.com/helius-raises-12-8-million-cad-to-help-devs-build-blockchain-apps-on-solana/"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Mert Mumtaz — The Block Profile","type":"news_article","url":"https://www.theblock.co/profile/348913/mert-mumtaz"}]},{"content":"Helius has completed three disclosed funding rounds totaling approximately $34.85 million USD. The seed round of $3.1 million in October 2022 was co-led by Reciprocal Ventures and Chapter One, with participation from Solana Ventures, Alchemy Ventures, Big Brain Ventures, Propel VC, and angels including Magic Eden co-founder Zhuoxun Yin and Squads co-founder Stepan Simkin. The Series A of $9.5 million in February 2024 was led by Foundation Capital with returning participation from Reciprocal Ventures and Chapter One and new investors 6th Man Ventures and Propel, plus Solana ecosystem founders including Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal. The Series B of $21.75 million announced in September 2024 was co-led by Haun Ventures and Founders Fund, with supporting participation from Foundation Capital, Chapter One, 6th Man Ventures, and Spearhead. The investor base includes institutional-grade crypto and general technology venture funds, as well as strategic angels with deep Solana ecosystem ties. No token sale or public fundraising events have been identified.","heading":"Funding and Investors","severity":"low","sources":[{"credibility":2,"name":"Helius Raises $3.1M Seed — Decrypt","type":"news_article","url":"https://decrypt.co/112175/helius-seed-raise-solana-app-building"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Helius Raises $9.5M Series A — BusinessWire","type":"news_article","url":"https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240221967627/en/Helius-Raises-$9.5M-in-Series-A-Funding-to-Enhance-the-Developer-Experience-on-Solana"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Solana Developer Platform Helius Raises $9.5M Series A — The Block","type":"news_article","url":"https://www.theblock.co/post/278441/solana-developer-platform-helius-raises-9-5-million-in-series-a-funding"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Helius Raises $21.75M Series B — Unchained Crypto","type":"news_article","url":"https://unchainedcrypto.com/solana-developer-platform-helius-raises-21-75-million-in-series-b-round/"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Fortune: Helius Series A Raise","type":"news_article","url":"https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/02/22/app-developers-solana-helius-blockchain-raise/"}]},{"content":"Helius operates a globally distributed network of Solana RPC nodes across at least 11 regions, including Frankfurt, Tokyo, Newark, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, Amsterdam, and Singapore. Core product offerings include standard and enhanced JSON-RPC endpoints, the Digital Asset Standard (DAS) API for NFT and compressed-token queries, real-time transaction webhooks with automatic retries, and the LaserStream gRPC streaming service launched in June 2025, which taps directly into Solana validator shreds for sub-slot latency. In late 2025, Helius launched Gatekeeper, an in-house Rust-based edge gateway replacing Cloudflare in the critical request path to reduce latency by tens to hundreds of milliseconds. The company also operates Solana validators and offers Validator-as-a-Service (VaaS) for white-label enterprise deployments. In October 2025, Bitwise Asset Management selected Helius as the exclusive SOL staking provider powering the Bitwise Solana Staking ETF (NYSE: BSOL), the first U.S. spot Solana ETF with integrated staking. Helius maintains open-source repositories under the helius-labs GitHub organization, including the Helius SDK, AirShip (airdrop tooling), Photon (portfolio explorer), and the XRAY human-readable Solana block explorer.","heading":"Products and Technical Infrastructure","severity":"low","sources":[{"credibility":1,"name":"Helius LaserStream Launch — Helius Blog","type":"official","url":"https://www.helius.dev/blog/introducing-laserstream"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Gatekeeper: The Helius Edge Gateway — Helius Blog","type":"official","url":"https://www.helius.dev/blog/introducing-gatekeeper"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Bitwise Selects Helius as Exclusive SOL Staking Provider — Helius Blog","type":"official","url":"https://www.helius.dev/blog/bitwise-solana-etf"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Helius GitHub Organization","type":"official","url":"https://github.com/helius-labs"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Bitwise Solana Staking ETF (BSOL) Begins Trading — Bitwise","type":"official","url":"https://bitwiseinvestments.com/newsroom/the-bitwise-solana-staking-etf-bsol-begins-trading"}]},{"content":"Helius has obtained SOC 2 Type II certification, audited by Sensiba LLP with a clean opinion and no noted exceptions. The certification covers security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy controls. The company reports using SentinelOne for endpoint detection and response, Rippling MDM for device management, Vanta for continuous compliance monitoring, mandatory two-factor authentication across all systems, and regular third-party penetration testing. No SEC, CFTC, DOJ, or other regulatory enforcement actions have been identified against Helius or its principals. No significant user-data breaches, smart contract exploits, or protocol-level hacks have been publicly reported against Helius's infrastructure. A Trust Center is maintained at helius.dev where enterprise customers can request the SOC 2 report.","heading":"Security and Compliance","severity":"low","sources":[{"credibility":1,"name":"Helius Receives SOC 2 Type II Certification — Helius Blog","type":"official","url":"https://www.helius.dev/blog/soc2"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Protect Your Solana API Keys: Security Best Practices — Helius Docs","type":"official","url":"https://www.helius.dev/docs/rpc/protect-your-keys"}]},{"content":"Third-party monitoring services have recorded multiple service disruptions for Helius infrastructure. StatusGator reported tracking more than 35 outages over approximately a seven-month window from October 2025 onward, with a median incident duration of approximately one hour and 24 minutes. In the 90 days prior to April 2026, 13 incidents were recorded including one classified as a major outage and 12 minor incidents. Specific documented incidents include elevated HTTP 530 errors on api.helius.xyz and api-mainnet.helius-rpc.com from a U.S. East routing issue caused by a Cloudflare point-of-presence failure in April 2026, and a Frankfurt node timeout on the Gatekeeper Beta endpoint on April 25, 2026, which lasted approximately 26 minutes before traffic was automatically rerouted to Amsterdam. Helius maintains a public status page and has acknowledged incidents promptly. The introduction of the Gatekeeper edge gateway in 2025 was specifically intended to remove reliance on Cloudflare in the critical path, addressing one identified source of reliability risk. These incidents appear consistent with normal operational patterns for a high-volume distributed infrastructure provider rather than evidence of systemic failure.","heading":"Service Reliability and Incidents","severity":"medium","sources":[{"credibility":2,"name":"Helius Status Monitoring — StatusGator","type":"other","url":"https://statusgator.com/services/helius"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Helius Partial Outage for RPCs Using Gatekeeper — IsDown","type":"other","url":"https://isdown.app/status/helius/incidents/576474-partial-outage-for-rpcs-using-gatekeeper-endpoint-beta-helius-rpc-com-for-frankfurt"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Helius Elevated 530 Errors — Pingoru","type":"other","url":"https://pingoru.io/providers/helius/incidents/135724"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Helius Status Page — Helius Docs","type":"official","url":"https://www.helius.dev/docs/support/status-page"}]},{"content":"In January 2025, Miles Smith, who identified himself as a former lead infrastructure engineer at Helius (departed 2023), published a lengthy post on X alleging misconduct by co-founder and CEO Mert Mumtaz. Smith's alleged claims, as reported by Crypto.news, included: (1) that Mumtaz verbally abused a female Cloudflare sales representative; (2) that Mumtaz claimed the XRAY Solana block explorer — which placed second at a 2023 Solana hackathon — as a Helius product and told the winning team that hackathon prize money constituted payment, despite Mumtaz having previously funded the XRAY team in a manner that allegedly created a conflict of interest; (3) that Helius masked substandard internal performance by routing traffic through a competitor, QuickNode; and (4) that Mumtaz engaged in career-obstructing behavior after terminating Smith by text message. Mumtaz publicly denied all allegations, stating the claims were 'hallucinated' and characterizing Smith as a harassing disgruntled former employee. No independent corroboration, court filings, regulatory complaints, or third-party witness accounts supporting Smith's allegations have been identified. The dispute remains a he-said/he-said situation between the founder and a former employee. The allegations carry low evidentiary confidence given the absence of corroborating sources; however, their publication in Crypto.news warrants disclosure.","heading":"Workplace Conduct Allegations Against CEO","severity":"medium","sources":[{"credibility":2,"name":"Former Helius engineer describes founder Mert Mumtaz as toxic — Crypto.news","type":"news_article","url":"https://crypto.news/former-helius-engineer-describes-founder-mert-mumtaz-as-toxic-in-lengthy-x-post/"},{"credibility":3,"name":"Former Helius Engineer Describes Founder Mert Mumtaz as Toxic — GFM Review","type":"news_article","url":"https://www.gfmreview.com/crypto/former-helius-engineer-describes-founder-mert-mumtaz-as-toxic-in-lengthy-x-post/"}]},{"content":"In September 2025, Helius Medical Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: HSDT) — an unrelated publicly traded medical device company — announced a partnership with Pantera Capital and Summer Capital to raise over $500 million to establish a Solana treasury company. The company subsequently renamed itself 'Solana Company' and changed its ticker to HSDT. The name overlap between Helius Medical Technologies/Solana Company (HSDT) and Helius the developer infrastructure company (helius.dev) is a source of public confusion and has generated conflated media coverage. These are legally and operationally distinct entities with no known corporate relationship. Parties researching Helius should be aware of this distinction. Helius the infrastructure company has not issued public equity, does not trade on any stock exchange, and has no connection to HSDT.","heading":"Name Confusion Risk: Helius Medical Technologies (HSDT)","severity":"medium","sources":[{"credibility":1,"name":"Helius Medical Technologies (NASDAQ:HSDT) $500M Solana Treasury — PRNewswire","type":"news_article","url":"https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/helius-nasdaqhsdt-in-partnership-with-pantera-capital-and-summer-capital-announces-over-500-million-in-funding-to-launch-sol-treasury-company-302556157.html"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Helius Medical Technologies Soars 250% on $500M Solana Treasury Raise — The Block","type":"news_article","url":"https://www.theblock.co/post/370651/helius-medical-technologies-soars-250-on-500m-solana-treasury-raise-led-by-pantera-summer-capital"}]},{"content":"Helius is generally regarded as the leading Solana-native RPC and API infrastructure provider, with competitors including QuickNode (multi-chain), Triton One (ultra-low-latency trading focus), Alchemy (multi-chain), and Chainstack (multi-chain). Industry comparisons from 2026 consistently rank Helius as the preferred choice for Solana-specific depth, enhanced NFT and token APIs, and validator integration, while recommending competitors for multi-chain teams or ultra-low-latency MEV use cases. Helius launched the Helius Startup Launchpad program to provide infrastructure access to early-stage Solana builders. The company also joined the Solana Research Institute as a founding member.","heading":"Market Position and Competitive Landscape","severity":"low","sources":[{"credibility":2,"name":"Best Solana RPC Providers 2026 — Backpack Exchange","type":"research","url":"https://learn.backpack.exchange/articles/best-solana-rpc-providers"},{"credibility":2,"name":"9 Best Solana RPC Providers 2026 — Alchemy","type":"research","url":"https://www.alchemy.com/overviews/solana-rpc"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Complete Guide to Solana RPC Providers 2026 — Sanctum","type":"research","url":"https://sanctum.so/blog/complete-guide-solana-rpc-providers-2026"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Helius Joins Solana Research Institute — Helius Blog","type":"official","url":"https://www.helius.dev/blog/solana-research-institute"}]}],"sources_used":[{"credibility":1,"name":"Helius Official Website","type":"official","url":"https://www.helius.dev/"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Helius Raises $3.1M Seed — Decrypt","type":"news_article","url":"https://decrypt.co/112175/helius-seed-raise-solana-app-building"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Helius Raises $9.5M Series A — BusinessWire","type":"news_article","url":"https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240221967627/en/Helius-Raises-$9.5M-in-Series-A-Funding-to-Enhance-the-Developer-Experience-on-Solana"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Helius Series A — The Block","type":"news_article","url":"https://www.theblock.co/post/278441/solana-developer-platform-helius-raises-9-5-million-in-series-a-funding"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Helius Series A — Fortune","type":"news_article","url":"https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/02/22/app-developers-solana-helius-blockchain-raise/"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Helius Raises $12.8M CAD — BetaKit","type":"news_article","url":"https://betakit.com/helius-raises-12-8-million-cad-to-help-devs-build-blockchain-apps-on-solana/"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Helius Series B Announcement — Unchained Crypto","type":"news_article","url":"https://unchainedcrypto.com/solana-developer-platform-helius-raises-21-75-million-in-series-b-round/"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Helius Funding Blog — Helius","type":"official","url":"https://www.helius.dev/blog/funding-announcement"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Mert Mumtaz — IQ.wiki","type":"research","url":"https://iq.wiki/wiki/mert-mumtaz"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Mert Mumtaz — The Block","type":"news_article","url":"https://www.theblock.co/profile/348913/mert-mumtaz"},{"credibility":2,"name":"The Rise of Mert Mumtaz — CoinTelegraph","type":"news_article","url":"https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/solana-champion-mert-mumtaz-fud-sol-most-helius/"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Former Helius Engineer Post — Crypto.news","type":"news_article","url":"https://crypto.news/former-helius-engineer-describes-founder-mert-mumtaz-as-toxic-in-lengthy-x-post/"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Helius SOC 2 Type II Certification — Helius Blog","type":"official","url":"https://www.helius.dev/blog/soc2"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Helius LaserStream Launch — Helius Blog","type":"official","url":"https://www.helius.dev/blog/introducing-laserstream"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Helius Gatekeeper Edge Gateway — Helius Blog","type":"official","url":"https://www.helius.dev/blog/introducing-gatekeeper"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Bitwise Selects Helius as SOL Staking Provider — Helius Blog","type":"official","url":"https://www.helius.dev/blog/bitwise-solana-etf"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Bitwise BSOL ETF Begins Trading — Bitwise Investments","type":"official","url":"https://bitwiseinvestments.com/newsroom/the-bitwise-solana-staking-etf-bsol-begins-trading"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Helius Status — StatusGator","type":"other","url":"https://statusgator.com/services/helius"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Helius Partial Outage — IsDown","type":"other","url":"https://isdown.app/status/helius/incidents/576474-partial-outage-for-rpcs-using-gatekeeper-endpoint-beta-helius-rpc-com-for-frankfurt"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Helius Elevated 530 Errors — Pingoru","type":"other","url":"https://pingoru.io/providers/helius/incidents/135724"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Helius Medical Technologies $500M Solana Treasury — PRNewswire","type":"news_article","url":"https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/helius-nasdaqhsdt-in-partnership-with-pantera-capital-and-summer-capital-announces-over-500-million-in-funding-to-launch-sol-treasury-company-302556157.html"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Helius Medical Technologies Soars 250% on $500M Raise — The Block","type":"news_article","url":"https://www.theblock.co/post/370651/helius-medical-technologies-soars-250-on-500m-solana-treasury-raise-led-by-pantera-summer-capital"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Best Solana RPC Providers 2026 — Backpack","type":"research","url":"https://learn.backpack.exchange/articles/best-solana-rpc-providers"},{"credibility":1,"name":"Helius GitHub Organization","type":"official","url":"https://github.com/helius-labs"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Helius on Solana — Solana Compass","type":"research","url":"https://solanacompass.com/projects/helius"}],"summary":"Helius (helius.dev) is a Toronto-founded, Solana-focused developer infrastructure company offering RPC nodes, enhanced APIs, webhooks, data streaming, and validator services. Founded in June 2022 by former Coinbase and AWS engineers, the company has raised $34.85 million across three rounds led by Founders Fund, Haun Ventures, and Foundation Capital, and operates as a key infrastructure layer for the Solana ecosystem. No regulatory actions or security breaches have been identified against Helius; the main risk signals are minor service reliability incidents and unresolved workplace conduct allegations against its CEO.","timeline":[{"date":"2022-06-01","event":"Helius founded by Mert Mumtaz, Liam Vovk, and Nicolas Pennie after Mumtaz left Coinbase.","source":"IQ.wiki / Decrypt","source_url":"https://iq.wiki/wiki/mert-mumtaz"},{"date":"2022-10-19","event":"Helius closes $3.1 million seed round co-led by Reciprocal Ventures and Chapter One.","source":"Decrypt","source_url":"https://decrypt.co/112175/helius-seed-raise-solana-app-building"},{"date":"2024-02-21","event":"Helius closes $9.5 million Series A led by Foundation Capital, bringing total raised to ~$12.6M.","source":"BusinessWire","source_url":"https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240221967627/en/Helius-Raises-$9.5M-in-Series-A-Funding-to-Enhance-the-Developer-Experience-on-Solana"},{"date":"2024-05-01","event":"Helius launches its Solana validator and the hSOL liquid staking token.","source":"Helius Blog","source_url":"https://www.helius.dev/blog/funding-announcement"},{"date":"2024-07-01","event":"Helius becomes Solana's leading validator by total stake within two months of launch.","source":"Helius Blog","source_url":"https://www.helius.dev/blog/funding-announcement"},{"date":"2024-09-18","event":"Helius closes $21.75 million Series B co-led by Haun Ventures and Founders Fund, bringing total raised to $34.85M.","source":"Unchained Crypto","source_url":"https://unchainedcrypto.com/solana-developer-platform-helius-raises-21-75-million-in-series-b-round/"},{"date":"2025-01-30","event":"Former engineer Miles Smith publishes allegations against CEO Mert Mumtaz on X, including claims of workplace toxicity, IP misappropriation, and technical misrepresentation. Mumtaz publicly denies all allegations.","source":"Crypto.news","source_url":"https://crypto.news/former-helius-engineer-describes-founder-mert-mumtaz-as-toxic-in-lengthy-x-post/"},{"date":"2025-06-18","event":"Helius launches LaserStream, a gRPC-based real-time data streaming product for Solana developers.","source":"Helius Blog","source_url":"https://www.helius.dev/blog/introducing-laserstream"},{"date":"2025-09-15","event":"Unrelated company Helius Medical Technologies (NASDAQ: HSDT) raises $500M to create a Solana treasury, causing widespread name confusion with helius.dev.","source":"CoinDesk","source_url":"https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/09/15/pantera-backed-solana-treasury-firm-helius-raises-usd500m-stock-soars-over-200"},{"date":"2025-10-28","event":"Bitwise Solana Staking ETF (NYSE: BSOL) begins trading, exclusively powered by Helius validators.","source":"Bitwise Investments","source_url":"https://bitwiseinvestments.com/newsroom/the-bitwise-solana-staking-etf-bsol-begins-trading"},{"date":"2026-04-25","event":"Frankfurt node timeout incident on Gatekeeper Beta endpoint lasting approximately 26 minutes; auto-rerouted to Amsterdam.","source":"IsDown","source_url":"https://isdown.app/status/helius/incidents/576474-partial-outage-for-rpcs-using-gatekeeper-endpoint-beta-helius-rpc-com-for-frankfurt"}]},"v":1}