What is Harmony (ONE)?
Harmony (ONE) is the utility and governance token for the platform of the same name. Harmony is a sharding-based blockchain ecosystem that enables developers to work on decentralized applications (dApps), DeFi solutions, and other Web3-ready products.
Who Founded Harmony?
The founder of Harmony is Dr. Stephen Tse. He’s a researcher with a focus on cryptographic technology. Prior to founding Harmony, he also worked as an engineer at Google and Apple, as well as founded the search engine Spotsetter.
The goal of the Harmony crypto project was to solve some of the scalability and bottleneck issues experienced by the growth of the blockchain userbase, particularly the Bitcoin and Ethereum communities. Harmony aims to be the next-generation blockchain solution that uses randomized sharding for efficiency and network security.
Harmony was founded in 2017, consisting of a team of researchers who had prior experience at Google, Microsoft, and Apple. The token seed sale was completed in May 2018, and the initial exchange offering (IEO) officially occurred in May 2019. At this time, the ONE price was around $0.02.
Although the value of Harmony remained relatively low for the first few years of its existence, it was nonetheless considered to be volatile. It experienced notable growth in 2021, passing the $0.10 threshold in March. That year, the peak was reached in October, when the Harmony price exceeded $0.35.
What Are the Main Features of Harmony?
The maximum supply of Harmony tokens is hard-capped at 12,600,000,000. Since it’s a deflationary asset, it’s predicted that the ONE price will increase as its supply diminishes. According to the tokenomics, the supply is allocated accordingly:
- 26.4% towards protocol development;
- 22.4% towards the initial seed sale;
- 21.8% towards network development;
- 16.9% towards the founding and development teams;
- 12.5% towards the launchpad sale.
ONE primarily acts as the utility token on the platform. Developers can use Harmony coins to enable cross-shard contracts and build cross-chain applications. The system is interoperable. Harmony can also act as a bridge that connects both Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchains.
Users can access open-source developer tools to work on applications. It’s also possible to interact with apps that have been built using the Harmony crypto environment. Regular users and developers can access the full range of services for a fee. The ONE price depends on the selected services on-chain.
The Harmony technology uses cryptographic randomness to fend off single shard attacks. This process re-shards the network and, alongside zero-knowledge proof, protects the data from malicious parties. Sharding helps solve scalability issues experienced by some layer-1 blockchains, such as Ethereum.
The platform uses a Verifiable Random Function (VRF) to randomize the network nodes. Thanks to these processes, the platform runs faster and can process a higher number of transactions without sacrificing data integrity and security.
The Harmony ecosystem relies on a type of Proof-of-Stake known as the Effective Proof-of-Stake (EPoS) consensus algorithm to validate new blocks and reinforce network security. It focuses on maximizing the amount of validators working on the blockchain simultaneously.
Harmony tokens are also used to reward stakeholders, developers, and other blockchain community members as an incentive to maintain their contributions to the network. The Harmony price value for the rewards depends on the amount of assets staked and how long the network node has been running for.
The Harmony ecosystem runs as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), meaning that it’s decentralized and any decisions regarding the protocol are made by the vote of the community. ONE serves as the governance token.
