Similarly to Bitcoin, miners are paid by a combination of minting HNT (which halves over time) and fees paid by network usage. I'm very curious to see how this will play out over time. If network usage / fees don't increase over time while HNT issuance drops, will miners stop mining? Would the revenue still be enough to incentivize long term maintenance? Unlike Bitcoin, if miners stop mining, that directly reduces the value of the network due to a decrease in coverage. Is there a possibility of a spiral, where network usage drops due to reduced network coverage, and then miners stop mining due to the drop in usage?
I've not really dug into the details as to what solutions Helium has, but it is quite interesting to see how this experiment will play out.