- Harmony is a well-performing chain grounded on proof of stake algorithm and state sharding, where every shard is equal to an individual blockchain.
- While scaling, sharding is the major technology the most open chains utilize. Harmony is one of those chains while scaling solutions are still being sought by Ethereum.
- Harmony’s native coin ONE is having a market capitalization of $3.1 Billion and is priced at $0.2746, up by 11.57% as of this writing.
Since 2020 the number of decentralized applications (DApps) on the Ethereum blockchain has crossed the 400 mark. But the transaction per second or TPS of Ethereum is only 15, making the gas fees and congestion too high.
Scaling solutions are needed by Ethereum urgently to elevate its block limit to push TPS. That’s why Ethereum is looking forward for making Ether’s scalability better via network upgrades.
In order to better the sustainability, safety, and scalability following upgrades are included in Ethereum 2.0.
- Beacon Chain: It will introduce a PoS algorithm utilized for generating fresh blocks and to reach an agreement with the other nodes. Infrastructure for the sharding process is offered by the beacon chain.
- Shard Chain: Ethereum’s carrying capacity, as well as scalability, will become better by the creation of 64 new shard chains.
- The Merge: This points out the slow movement of the Ethereum mainnet to the beacon chain. PoS consensus algorithm will be allowed completely on Ethereum Network after Upgrade.
These upgrades of Ethereum 2.0 will surely make a difference on the ethereum network, but people have to wait for many years in order to experience these upgrades.
Because of various barriers encountered while transforming ethereum, other solutions are being thought by the devs parallelly, giving rise to fresh blockchains.
Various open chains are choosing the sharding tech when scaling. And Harmony is one of the chains that is already operating on sharding Mechanism.
What is Harmony?
Harmony, a blockchain platform, planned for assisting the utilization and development of dApps. A major focus of the network is to develop a plan for how dApps operate by concentrating on random state sharding, which is capable of generating the blocks within seconds.
Harmony is a swift and safe blockchain for dApps. 4 shards of 1000 nodes are supported by the mainnet of Harmony, which is capable of generating blocks in a couple of seconds.
Centralization is decreased through its EPoS or Effective Proof of Work mechanism while supporting double sign slashing, reward compounding, and delegation of stakes.
Harmony is targeting to construct a public network of nodes, regulated and controlled by a massive community. This node community is known as Pangaea. The reason this project is called Harmony is because of harmony music, which resonates even after we are singing in different notes. It corresponds to its geared-up multiple shards protocol but achieves consensus. “For One and For All” that’s the perspective of Harmony making a public consensus for 10 Billion people. This is why their token is named ONE.
As of this writing, the price of Harmony’s ONE token was bullish by 11.57%, trending at $0.2746, having a market cap of $3.1 Billion.
A total of $3.22 Billion TVL of Harmony is distributed, where Dexes holds $1.68 Billion(52.1%), Bridge, its DeFi protocol category holds $1.43 Billion(44.3%), lending section holds $0.05 Billion(1.5%), Assets hold $0.04 Billion(1.1%), and its Yield is allocated at $0.03 Billion(0.8%).
Why Choose Harmony Over Others?
A block is signed in a couple of seconds, which is very fast as compared to other blockchains like Ethereum that signs a block every 12 seconds. Where Ethereum charges a transaction fee of around $0.3, Harmony blockchain offers very nominal charges for transactions, around $0.001. Also, 250 nodes are supported by each shard, enhancing the block generation capacity.
Some more reasons to choose Harmony over others can be seen below.
- Consensus: Fast Byzantine Fault Tolerance (FBFT) is the consensus algorithm of Harmony. Problem is, the more nodes there are, complications in the communications will increase. In FBFT, a multi-signature operation is performed by the leader, which gathers the validators’ votes, reducing the complications regarding comms.
- Distributed Randomness Generation(DRG): This is a method for streamlining platform communication. Harmony skillfully blends the cryptographic capabilities of the VRF (Verifiable Random Function)+ and the VDF (Verifiable Delay Function). All verifiers generate random numbers initially in this procedure, and then the leader does a secondary calculation on the random numbers. This method assures those malevolent nodes cannot forecast or meddle with the outcomes of random numbers beforehand, and the entire procedure is simple and quick to perform.
- DeepSharding: It is a multi-layer sharding that includes the network, transactions, and state, in combination with the Kademlia routing algorithm, enabling block data to be sent to the destinations in the quickest way. It also enables the insertion of minor nodes depending on this, providing maximum decentralization. We will discuss more Sharding in this article shortly.
- Effective Proof of Stake: EpoS is the very first process of staking in the sharded blockchain that attains both decentralization and safety. EpoS enables staking from hundreds of verifiers and a distinct effective stake process lowers the stake centralization tendency. Meanwhile, it also supports unavailability checking, double sign slashing, reward compounding, and stake delegation.
Sharding
Blockchain of Harmony is sharded into three dimensions, that are, transaction, state, and network.
- State Sharding: Every shard up keeps its state database and blockchain. Therefore, only 1/N of the global state is needed to be stored by each verifier, where N denotes the number of shards. Atomicity of cross-shard transactions guarantees constancy among different shards, which assures double-spending among shards won’t occur.
- Network Sharding: Validator network of Harmony is also split into shards where a discrete set of verifiers is involved in every shard tied closely with each other and running consensus among themselves. In order to reach consensus verifiers interact with other verifiers within the shard. Verifiers in separate shards are able to interact with other verifiers via international networks in case of beacon chain sync and cross-shard transactions.
- Transaction sharding: Rather than all shards Harmony blockchain transactions are sent and processed by a particular shard. This greatly enhances the capability of processing transactions on a blockchain.
DaVinci: First Harmony Marketplace
DaVinci is an NFT marketplace based on Harmony blockchain, enabling users to create, mint as well as trade NFTs on the marketplace, with a very nominal fee and a couple of seconds finality. DaVinci was developed on a promise to provide a free NFT minting platform for all, keeping in mind the Harmony blockchain’s culture.
As of now, there are 8915 artists registered on DaVinci, 89965 NFTs are minted, 88470 copies are sold at an average price of 41 ONE. Total sales of the NFT marketplace have reached almost 3.7 Million ONE or $0.8 Million, and are expected to elevate.
On the Harmony blockchain, every block is signed in a couple of seconds, so the clients of DaVinci will have an experience similar to Visa.
DEFI Projects
The DEX category is where Harmony’s DeFi efforts are focused. Loans, yield, and other sectors are still in their infancy.
Furthermore, Defi Kingdoms, a play-to-earn game with a game as the bearer and Decentralized Finance as the core, has the highest TVL on Harmony. Sushi, ViperSwap, MochiSwap, Unifi Protocol, JellySwap, SeeSwap, SwapCat are among the DeFi projects on Harmony.
For Instance, if the users visit ViperSwap, they might get surprised by some mouth-watering APRs provided by the liquidity pools on the platform.
As of now,
- wsWagmi-Viper and wsWagmi-ONE are giving APR at 2053% and 1254% respectively
- ONE-UST is returning APR at 616.1%
- ONE-BUSD is returning APR at 549.1%
- ONE-1ETH is returning APR at 232.1%.
Many more liquidity pools are available there which the users can check out for some juicy profits.