Harmony (ONE): A Blockchain with Sharding and High Speeds

What is Harmony (ONE)?

Harmony (ONE) is a layer 1 blockchain network that offers fast transaction speeds, low fees, and interoperability with other layer 1 networks. It is also the first sharding network to offer staking, with consistent annual returns for both validators and delegators.

The platform was designed for decentralized applications (DApps) and currently processes more than 2,000 transactions per second (TPS) with 2-second finality and fees approximately 1,000 times lower than those of the Ethereum network. The project aims to scale to one million transactions per second, with its sharding protocol adding 500 TPS per shard.

In this review, you will learn more details about Harmony (ONE) and be able to form your own opinion about whether investing in this project is worthwhile.

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The History of Harmony

Harmony was founded in 2017 by Stephen Tse, Rongjian Lan, Sahil Dewan, and Nick White. The team behind the project has extensive experience working for globally renowned companies such as Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook.

Before being migrated to the Harmony blockchain starting in January 2020, ONE tokens were initially launched on the Ethereum and Binance networks. Users who wanted to participate in staking, governance, and other network activities therefore had to migrate their tokens to Harmony.

Harmony became the first sharded blockchain to launch staking on May 16, 2020. In 2021, the network added support for a web wallet and also launched the 1Wallet on-chain wallet. It also initiated decentralized voting and added bridges to the Bitcoin and Polkadot networks. In 2022, the Harmony project aims to increase adoption and interoperability across its network.

Where Can You Buy Harmony?

You can buy Harmony (ONE) cryptocurrency on most crypto trading platforms, as well as on several decentralized exchanges. Here are a few options you can consider with complete confidence:

• Binance – Use the VAE18EEC coupon for 20% cashback on all trading fees.
• KuCoin – Offers trading for more than 300 highly popular cryptocurrencies. It is often the first exchange to offer buying opportunities for new tokens.
• Gate.io – The largest platform for newly launched cryptocurrencies.

Advantages of Harmony

Like any crypto project under development, Harmony offers fast transactions with low fees. The network can currently process more than 2,000 transactions per second (TPS), a performance comparable to what Visa offers and greater than what Bitcoin and Ethereum can support.

The Harmony network uses a sharding mechanism that allows 500 TPS to be added to the network for each shard, and the project has a future goal of 2,000 shards, which would give the network a potential capacity of 1 million TPS. Transaction fees are approximately 1,000 times lower than those of the Ethereum platform.

Additionally, the Harmony network is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), meaning ETH developers can easily port their projects to Harmony.

Another key advantage of Harmony is that you can stake the ONE cryptocurrency to earn a return of at least 3.5%, with higher returns exceeding 100% when fewer cryptocurrencies are staked on the network, and more realistic returns when more validators and delegators stake their tokens.

In addition, to become a validator, you need to stake only 10,000 ONE, currently equivalent to approximately USD 650 (at the current price of USD 0.065 per unit), making the barrier to entry fairly low. The price is particularly low when compared with something like NEAR, which requires an investment of more than one million dollars to become a validator.

Disadvantages of Harmony

The only real disadvantage of Harmony is that it is not the only blockchain project seeking to solve scalability problems and create an ecosystem with low fees and fast transactions.

There is currently a great deal of competition in the crypto sector, as more and more projects seek to solve the same problem. Although it is unlikely that a single blockchain network will become the sole choice for the entire world, there is still market share that Harmony can capture by offering the benefits of a fast and highly scalable network.

On the other hand, if another blockchain offers something similar to the Harmony network, or if the Ethereum upgrade to version 2.0 solves scalability problems and significantly reduces gas fees, Harmony’s long-term success could suffer.

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