INTRODUCTION
Since the inception of the blockchain, it has come with lots of advantages and also few disadvantages. Asides the fact that it has introduced a lot of ways to make money through digital means, it has also provide a lot of avenue for people to gain and contribute intellectually. Starting from the days of 10 transaction within a minute to one million transaction in a second, blockchain has evolved and this will not be possible without the help of exceptional programmers and developers. Blockchain came into the financial system and took the bull by the horn even though it's a slow process from way back, but in recent time, we can see how fast and sleek crypto is raging towards the world. Now its not catching up with the people, but we the people are running to catch up with it. From days of blocks and a single node to modern technology ways of scaling and securing the chain. Blockchain provides an avenue for financial houses to see how transparent and secured finance can be.
For every successful venture, there is always antagonism and for the blockchain we have within and outside the chain. Since crypto became acceptable which equals the blockchain processing transactions in thousands, there has been a problem with the platform. We have the issue of scaling, efficiency on the network and level of performance on the blockchain and the issue of security outside the platform. Other platforms like Bitcoin and Ethereum had put in a lot of effort into solving this issue but the problem still remain marginal. Which is why the Harmony team established a platform that will give the chain a better solution to end this problem.
ABOUT HARMONY
Harmony is a complete decentralised open source platform that encourages transparency and enables high level performance due to the use of its built in system on the blockchain. After observing all the listed problems stated above troubling the blockchain with no possible solution, Harmony then went back to the drawing board and reconstruct a valid solution that will help solve the problems faced on the blockchain on scaling. They introduced the "linear scaling" to help fight the war against scaling and also made use of sharding technique. They can be referred to as the anti-google and anti-facebook.
WHAT DIFFERENTIATES HARMONY FROM OTHER NETWORKS
In no particular order, here are the reasons why Harmony is different from it peers:
Scalability: While other networks are busy using protocol scaling (having a monolithic network and trying to make it fast as much as you can thereby creating diminishing returns), Harmony stepped away from all this to break up its network into smaller components by having more machines and building high troopers. By so doing this, they hereby solves 70% of the problem affecting the blockchain. They built an endgame from the beginning while focusing on the future of the 10Billion users.
High Level Performance(Fast Consensus): Throughout the years, we have noticed that the technology and architecture of a platform matters the most. They both will create room for improvement on the platform from near and future years to come. Harmony made use of POS(proof of stake) which makes the consensus faster because of the linear scaling and also makes the transaction cost lower unlike the POW(proof of work) chains whose validation and reward is based on transaction done.
Secured Sharding : Asides helping to boost the network performance, sharding is also the key to a secure network because it helps prevent malicious visitor from corrupting the system.
Consistent cross-shard transactions : Harmony encourages multiple chains running side by side and communicating together. This is why they make use of cross-sharding transaction to ease communication and performance.
HOW DOES SHARDING ON MULTIPLE LAYERS IMPROVE SECURITY AND EFFICIENCY
One of the vision of the company is to take blockchain to the next level which is why they implemented sharding in the first place. Not just any sharding but deep sharding which will be used to realise the potential of the blockchain so that applications can reach their maximum production. The challenges sharding has is that it has no infinite bandwidth, infinite storage, infinite computer to communicate with other nodes, so when Harmony shards, they made sure to use little bits of its resources for each nodes.
The other network only do transactional sharding and that is why Harmony is targeting sharding on the aforementioned levels because that is the only means to make the network fully scalable.
Also while breaking up the network into smaller pieces, it is easy for attacks to come in and basically try to compromise the shards, so to deal with this, Harmony decided to do there sharding randomly.
Harmony designs a PoS-based full sharding scheme that’s linearly scalable and provably secure. Harmony contains a beacon chain and multiple shard chains. The beacon chain serves as the randomness beacon and identity register, while the shard chains store separate blockchain states and process transactions concurrently. source
Improves security: One of the reasons why people would want to be associated with the blockchain or any network is the security. The Harmony team implemented the zero-knowledge software into their sharding system to secure their network.
Zero-knowledge: This software provides a room for you to answer a question without exposing the other private details. This software is used to scale decentralized exchanges so as to provide water tight security on the users data.
The team also implemented the distributed randomness generation which is a key feature for sharding in selecting shards randomly. They made use of :Veritable Random Function: Can be easily manipulated
Veritable Delay Function: Will delay manipulation.
With these two combined features, it will not be easy for attackers to penetrate into the harmony network.For Efficiency: By using full state sharding it enables them to squeeze in an extra performance on the network.Using linear scaling ensures fast transaction and efficiency on the network.
HARMONY TEAM
The team comes from software engineering background and they have made sure to leverage their expertise on this because they have experience in infrastructure and software development with centralised multinational platform like Google, Amazon and Apple. They are hereby familiar with the latest techniques.This is why they are catering to 10 Billion people worldwide by building an open ledger platform with an open consensus where everything is all about interactive and reciprocative consensus.
USE CASES
With the advent of blockchain, a lot of gaming dapps have been established and most of them are built on other networks. These mobile game company wants to ensure that there platform is secure from hackers and constantly fast to ensure smooth gaming for its users. Well as advisable, Harmony will be the best network to host them because of there technology and scalability. Harmony will ensure that the cost is lower by making sure that all values in form of reward does not go to the miners alone. They will make sure the reward is on the chain within the game eco-sysytem shared among all concerned parties including the content creators.
Another use case is the ecommerce market. So many ecommerce market are springing up in association to the blockchain. To ensure the comfort of their users and creators, they can implement the harmony software/technology on their platform which will allow the users make use of tokens and also help sustain their cost of maintenance. The Harmony software will also ensure smooth shopping for its users and quick transaction without delay. It will also help improve our economy in a large scale.
IN CONCLUSION
Harmony is not just about now but they are all up about the future of the blockchain. They are the anti-facebook of our time and this is why they are placing value on the blockchain by providing necessary tool for users in terms of scaling, security and transaction cost.The team are compassionate and very humany oriented about the blockchain which is why they are building a community which is more than just a blockchain so as to make the world a better place crypto wise.
Harmony made there platform language an easy one so as to teach people how to write a smart contract by so doing, the contributors get rewarded with harmony token.They have so many plans for contributors and users. From seed funding to monetizing our data, to creating incentive scheme. Harmonyis the present and future of the blockchain.They are building an international community where we all can grow together by using new technology.
For better information and to know what the team is working on, kindly visit them in the underlisted channels.
Harmony Website
Harmony Medium
Harmony Telegram
Harmony Twitter
Harmony LinkedIn
Harmony Onepager
Harmony Instagram
Harmony Whitepaper
All images are pulled from Harmony's social pages and website.