What is blockchain and cryptocurrency Harmony (One)

Harmony Protocol founded several people in 2018 in 2018: Rongjiang Lan, Nick White, Stephen Tse and Sahil Devan. Previously, they worked in large technological companies, including Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook.

Already at the beginning of 2019, the startup team held three rounds of investment and attracted investment totaling $ 28.5 million.

The main Harmony network was launched in June 2019, and in May 2020, the network decentralization took place by launching the mechanism of delegation to the validators of native coins of one, blocked in stakeing.

Features of the Harmony blockchain

The Harmony protocol has two features that allow this blockchain to achieve high performance:

• The unique Effective Proof-Of-Stake (EPOS) consensus mechanism;
• Charding, that is, the separation of a single chain of blocks into segments working in parallel.

The EPOS mechanism is based on a widespread Delegated Proof-OF-Stake algorithm, in which coin holders can participate in the network, delegating cryptocurrencies to validators.

To achieve consensus between the validators, the FAST BYZANTINE FAULT Tolerance (FBFT) protocol is used. It allows you to simultaneously process transactions in separate segments (hearts), which increases speed and efficiency. As a result, the creation of new blocks in Harmony takes less than 2 seconds.

FBFT consensus consists of three stages:

1. Ad. At the beginning of the new round, an accidentally appointed leader creates a new block and passes its hash to all validators;
2. Training. The validators check the message, sign the head of the block and send the signature back to the leader. To complete the phase, at least 2/3 of the vote should be collected;
3. Fixation. The leader combines the collected signatures in the total signature and sends the validators. They check whether 2/3 of the votes in the previous phase were really collected, and sign the approved block, which will be recorded by the leader after the collection of at least 2/3 of the signatures.

How Charding works

The consensus achievement cycle in Harmony is called the “era” and lasts 32,768 blocks (about 18.2 hours). Harmony blockchain validators are distributed between the “head” network (Beacon Chain), which is responsible for the consensus between segments (hearts).

The hearts work parallel to each other, each of them has its own group of validators, which is selected from the general list randomly for the duration of the next era. Transactions and blocks are also confirmed independently in every cartoon.

The principle of cartooning is necessary to achieve a high level of scalability of the Harmony blockchain. Each Shard supports its own chain of blocks and a database of states.

Separate elements of the Harmony network are synchronized at the end of each era. The so -called “zero” spark beacon chain, or “lighthouse”, acts as a coordinator for other hearts. It produces a fixed number of blocks. It is on the “lighthouse” that other hearts synchronize the height of their blocks of blocks. As soon as the next era ends in Beacon Chain, this change is also transmitted to other hearts.

Now all network activity is concentrated in Beacon Chain, and the hearts of 1, 2 and 3 are practically not used, although blocks are uninterruptedly generated. In the current Harmony configuration, it allows you to achieve a performance of 2000 transactions per second. With an increase in the load, the number of hearts can be increased.

The volume of emission and the functions of the native coin Harmony (One)

Initially, the project team released native cryptocurrency in the BNB Chain blockchain. The issue of 2.8 billion One was sold to large investors during investia rounds.

Harmony later held IEO on the Binance Launchpad platform. During tokensil, another 1.575 billion One were sold. In June 2019, the Native Monet was transferred to the Harmony network with the launch of their own mainnet, releasing 12.6 billion coins at once.

In September 2022, the total ONE proposal is more than 13.15 billion coins, and the maximum size of the emission is not limited. About 441 million One are produced annually for the reward of validators on the network, which corresponds to annual inflation of 3%. But, since the mechanism of burning commissions for transactions works, the actual inflation directly depends on the activity in the network.

The main methods of using one cryptocurrency:

• Payment of transaction commissions (less than $ 0.0005 per operation);
• participation in the management and development of the project using the Tao system;
• Stayking.

Harmony supports three user tokens standards completely similar to Ethereum standards: interchangeable HRC-20, as well as non-replaced tokens (NFT)-HRC-721 and HRC-1155.

Staying cryptocurrency One

In the Harmony blockchain, the number of available slots for validators increased several times in accordance with the needs of the network and currently exceeds 800. However, of these active validators are just more than 150.

The validator must have at least 10001 coins One in a wallet. Coin holders transfer their One to selected validators A new Web3 running in exchange for a certain share of rewards for the block. As of mid -September 2022, the profitability of Stayking One when delegating cryptocurrency is more than 9% per annum.

The important difference between EPOS and DPOS is a special mechanism for the distribution of remuneration, which encourages decentralization. The profitability of GCDs with a smaller amount of One in a steak is larger than that of large validators. This stimulates control of nodes, each of which has a small steak than one large knot.

How many projects in the Harmony ecosystem

Activity in Harmony began to grow rapidly in 2021 simultaneously with the main competitors-EVM-compatible networks Polygon, Avalanche, Fantom, BNB Chain and others.

According to Defi Llama for September 2022, about 60 Defi Protokols operate on this blockchain. In total, more than 200 decentralized applications have already launched in this network. Compatibility with EVM allowed to easily integrate successful projects from Ethereum in Harmony.

Among the large protocols operating on the Harmony network, you can distinguish a decentralized Sushiswap exchange, AAVE landing service, Synapse and Router Protocol, as well as BEEFY revenue unit. The GameFi segment is represented by the blockchain guards Defi Kingdoms, Defira, Marscolony, Knight & PEASANTS, MOON ROBOTS and other projects.

In January 2022, the volume of blocked liquidity (TVL) in the Harmony ecosystem reached $ 1.35 billion. But in the next few months, against the background of the “bear” TVL market, it dropped to less than $ 40 million.

Network activity has also decreased many times. If on January 24, 2022 more than 5.3 million transactions per day were processed, then in September, an average of a number of transactions does not exceed 250 thousand per day, and the number of active wallets is about 10 thousand. Moreover, the mentioned blockchain-game Defi Kingdoms provides almost 50% of activity on the network.

A big blow for Harmony was the attack on the Horizon cross-bridge, from which the project has not yet been able to fully recover.

Hut of the Horizon cross-bridge and the theft of cryptocurrency for $ 100 million

On June 23, 2022, the hackers managed to hack the Horizon Ethereum Bridge bridge, as a result of which users stole about $ 100 million in cryptocurrency.

The Harmony team offered hackers for a return of funds award of $ 1 million, and then $ 10 million. However, the attackers ignored all the proposals and washed the stolen funds through the Tornado Cash mixer. According to experts, the infamous hacker group Lazarus, affiliated with the DPRK authorities, may be involved in hacking Horizon.

A month after the incident, the Harmony team published a plan for compensation for damage. It included the hard for the release of new One tokens that would be used to pay compensation to the victims of hacking. However, the Harmony community did not accept this proposal.

Since August 2022, the community has been discussing a new recovery plan, which involves the release of a special management token and the creation of a TAO called Recovery One Foundation based on it.

Harmony key partners and project prospects

In 2019, when the main Harmony network was launched, its key developer began to cooperate with several leading crypto projects. Then Harmony partners, in particular, became:

, network of decentralized blockchain oracles;
• Ankr, decentralized computing environment and platform for business applications.

In addition, Harmony actively collaborated with the teams of cryptocurrencells and steiling service providers.

In April 2019, Harmony entered into a partnership agreement with a platform for the tokenization of Nomica securities, which intended to use this blockchain to record information about the ownership of digital tokens and automation of their control.

In the fall of the same year, the Harmony Protocol presented a fund of $ 300 million, intended for the development of the ecosystem until the end of 2025. Of this amount, $ 180 million was allocated for grants for developers, and $ 50 million for financing 100 regional Tao. They also planned to conduct 10 hackathons for developers and launch programs for promoting liquidity and partners.

The next step was the launch of the Harmony One Accelerator in 2022, which is divided into four directions:

• Harmony Venture Network – search for strategic investors;
• Harmony Talent Network – attracting developers, designers and other specialists in the Harmony ecosystem;
• Harmony Advisors Network – consultations of experts in the field of corporate structure, finance, tokenomics, rights, etc.P.
• Harmony Services Network is a carefully selected list of service providers for blockchain companies from an audit of smart contracts to liquidity suppliers.

However, already in June 2022, the Harmony Protocol team announced a partial suspension of the fund’s work due to large losses incurred as a result of an attack on the Horizon bridge.