One year ago, Microsoft announced the "helios" project (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/webdev/archive/2014/02/18/introducing-asp-net-project-helios.aspx). Since then, there has been no updates on it's nuget package and no related news. Is it safe to start using it or is it dead?
ASP.NET users have been using Katana for a long while as it empowers the latest Web API and SignalR releases from Microsoft. Helios was an addition to that map initially.
They (Katana and Helios) will, however, not be heavily updated, as ASP.NET 5 uses a different design approach. Microsoft people said this unofficially in a few places, and should provide a better explanation when ASP.NET 5 is officially released.