What is Harmony

Harmony is an open-source blockchain that constructs decentralised apps (DApps). It employs a method known as state sharding to facilitate quick transactions, which divides a chain into parts that execute transactions and store data in parallel.

Harmony presently supports a thousand nodes distributed across four shards that work together to generate new blocks every eight seconds with finality (no threat of a competing fork). The project intends to create additional shards and supports more nodes in the future. The protocol's effective proof of stake (EPoS) staking mechanism enables token owners to delegate their holdings to network validators while preventing asset concentration. Harmony features its currency, ONE, which owners may use to stake on the network in exchange for block rewards and to pay for transactions.

A Brief History of Harmony

Stephen Tse and co-founders Rongjian Lan, Nick White, and Sahil Dewan launched Harmony in 2018. They were all infrastructure engineers who had previously worked for Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook. Harmony's mainnet launched in June 2019, and staking started in May 2020. In 2020, the team hoped to achieve cross-border usefulness, decentralised development, and auditable privacy.

The project created a new PoS form on its consensus layer called effective EPoS to enable Sybil resilience. EPoS members may stake directly or delegate their holdings to an active validator in exchange for block rewards. It also incentivises users to delegate to smaller validators, aiming to lessen stake concentration. EPoS also has incentive compounding, double-sign slashing (to keep validators honest), and unavailability checking.

Harmony raised a private round of US$18.3 million, a node round of $5,500,000 (headed by Binance Labs and HashKey Capital), and a $5 million initial exchange offering (IEO) via Binance Launchpad. Harmony now has 1,000 nodes, with 640 maintained by community members. Although it receives no staking payments, the Harmony Foundation looks after the remaining nodes. The team wants to offer the remaining node slots to the community as the network evolves.

In May 2018, Harmony completed a Seed token sale, generating $18.3 million at $0.0065 per token. The token sale distributed 22.4% of the total supply of tokens. Using Binance Launchpad they finalised the sale of the project. The IEO went live at the end of May 2019, generating $5 million. The sale price for ONEs was $0.003175 per token, and they distributed 12.5% of the total token supply.

How Harmony Works

Harmony's open, decentralised network is enabled possible by using the native protocol token - Harmony ONE. The token incentivises and rewards a wide range of players, including developers, validators/stakers, investors, and community members who develop to build, secure, and govern the network. Users must pay a small transaction fee in the native Harmony token to access the network.

Harmony's scalable, high-throughput protocol runs via its native token. The native token has multiple payment and protocol participation (staking, transaction fees, voting & governance). Harmony leverages blockchain to align the incentives of various stakeholders, developers, and businesses while enabling them to construct open markets for fungible and non-fungible tokens and assets.

What is Harmony Used for?

The platform focuses on strengthening decentralisation to accelerate the ecosystem's DeFi adoption. It is most beneficial for developing DApps and solutions capable of powering the construction of DApps.

Furthermore, ONE provides a highly scalable service and swift and efficient consensus software. It aids the execution of ultra-fast transaction processes using ordinary network connection protocols.

Notably, Harmony is famous for its high level of security while conducting network transactions. Harmony has introduced a completely scalable next-generation sharding-based blockchain. It is both safe and energy efficient. The team has innovated on both the protocol and network layers to support the burgeoning decentralised economy. The vision of Harmony's key takeaways is to scale billions of people's trust worldwide and establish a profoundly fair economy.