DeepChain深链
solana  /  key players  /  Core development & infrastructure
Helius

Helius and the RPC providers: the door between apps and the chain

Wallets and apps do not connect to the chain directly; they read and write through RPC nodes. Helius is one of the main RPC and data providers on Solana, and also runs a validator and the hSOL staking token.

Website ↗Docs ↗← Back to key players

What RPC is

When you check a balance or press “Send” in a wallet, the wallet is not running a validator node itself. It sends the request to an RPC node, which looks up on-chain data for you and forwards your transaction to the block-producing validator.

Solana’s data volume is huge, and running an RPC node that can handle production traffic yourself takes powerful servers and serious operations work. So the vast majority of wallets, exchanges and apps buy RPC from specialist providers.

What Helius does

  • RPC nodes: interfaces for wallets and apps to read and write on-chain data.
  • Webhooks and data APIs: notify apps when specified on-chain events happen; provide cleaned-up transaction histories and token and NFT data (including compressed NFTs).
  • Real-time data streams: data feeds for trading bots, market makers and others who need very low latency.
  • Staking: runs the Helius validator and issues the liquid staking token hSOL.
  • Research: the Helius blog is one of the main sources of explanations of Solana technology, and many plain-language write-ups of protocol upgrades come from it.
Helius Staked SOL (hSOL) locked valueWeekly · DefiLlama
$40M$80M$120M20252026

Locked value is in US dollars and moves with the SOL price.

Similar providers

Triton (which open-sourced Yellowstone gRPC, a widely used real-time data interface), QuickNode, Alchemy and others also provide RPC for Solana. Apps usually connect to several at once and fail over automatically when one has problems.

Controversies and risks

  • RPC concentration: if many apps depend on a few RPC providers, an outage at those providers, or a refusal to forward certain transactions, will make users feel the chain is broken even when the chain itself is fine.
  • Data trust: the on-chain data an app shows comes from its RPC. Normally that is fine, but it is why important actions should be cross-checked against more than one source.

What to watch

  1. Outage notices from large RPC providers: many “Solana isn’t working” moments actually happen at this layer.
  2. The size of providers’ own staking products, such as hSOL.

Sources

  • Helius’s website, docs and blog, and the helius-sdk repository (GitHub API).
  • hSOL locked value from DefiLlama. This page is an educational summary and is not investment advice.