Harmony is the world’s first fully sharded, proof-of-stake blockchain.
So what’s sharding, and why is Harmony needed today? The reasons are to be sought in the state of blockchains today and what the real world requires from an ideal blockchain.
Ultra High Speeds with True Decentralization for Real World Use
The biggest stumbling block with Bitcoin or Ethereum and other blockchains is their slow speed. The number of transactions they can perform lies between 7-15 per second. Several new blockchains like EOS or IOTA have attempted to increase transaction rates so as to make blockchain suitable for gaming, decentralized exchanges or real world fintech applications. These innovations however either compromise on security or decentralization.
Harmony is based on sharding and a balanced between speed and fair consensus for achieving the best results for real world use cases. With sharding, the computational load on the database is divided into smaller chunks of validators. The Mainnet will thus be able to deliver an unprecedented 118,000 TPS with scalability and security, which will equip it to handle real world operations in fintech and other industries.
The Harmony Mainnet was launched on June 28, 2019 on the world’s first, fully sharded blockchain. With 600 nodes, it figured among the top 15 networks.
The PANGAEA Testnet Success
Harmony achieved global popularity after it rolled out the PANGAEA game on its testnet. Over 1,800 users signed up across 84 countries to play, test and have fun. It affirmed the power of true decentralization by validators around the world. The results of the incentivized game will go into the fine tuning of the Mainnet.
Main Harmony Features
• Fully scalable: Processing and record keeping divided into shards for full scalability
• Secured sharding with distributed randomness
• Linear scaling and multiple layers for security
• Efficient, energy saving POS consensus mechanism
• Small stake holders can participate with adjustable staking
• Each new shard offers 10x more transactions
Equalizing the Staking Field with Effective Proof of Staking
Nodes in a blockchain perform the core function of generating blocks and thus approving transactions. They get rewarded for this work with coins or tokens, and the number depends on how much they have staked. The high stakers are included in a Committee in proof of stake (POS) blockchains like Ethereum. This committee has the right to produce and validate blocks. In some blockchains like EOS, the number of members is fixed (21 for EOS).
Since centralization goes against the nature of blockchain, the way the committee validators get selected is important. In Polkadot, the highest staker or bidder gets in. In Ethereum 2.0, there is random selection. In EOS or Tron, votes from toke holders decide the validators.
Harmony has introduced the Effective Proof of Stake (EPOS) concept. It combines the highest bidding model with a formula to calculate the “effective” stake – this formula decreases the influence of high ranked validators, while it increases the weight of low ranked validators, thus equalizing the playing field in a way.
Truly Decentralized with 30% External Nodes
Harmony recently invited the public to join its Mainnet. The Harmony Mainnet, after a recent upgrade, now has 800 nodes, of which 208 (about 26%) are external nodes. The aim is to have 30% external nodes to make Harmony decentralized and not needing permissions. The daily block reward stands at one million ONE tokens distributed across the nodes.
The Phase 1 of Harmony is live. As per the plan, the Phase 2 of Harmony will see 400 nodes with 4 shards (1,600 nodes), followed by a 6-shard mainnet. This will have external nodes forming a majority. To run further upgrades, the Harmony chain can be updated without going through a fork. This is called rolling network update.
Real World Use Cases for Harmony
Use Cases
Given the speed and reliability of Harmony, we can envisage a number of areas where it could be deployed:
• Retail payment processing
• Running an entire shopping region (upcoming Bitcoin cities of Arnhem or Malacca in Malaysia)
• Scientific projects, where both speed and security are important
• Micro-tasking platforms for training machines and AI – thousands of workers work here
• E-commerce stores to handle heavy transaction volumes
To conclude, Harmony is thus aiming to create an open infrastructure that is “a revolutionary high-throughput, low-latency, and low-fee consensus platform designed to power decentralized economies of the future.”