Harmony & Sustainability

As the crypto industry gets more diverse and more projects to appear proposing their unique solutions, it becomes harder for them to impress investors. Today, people who are trading cryptocurrencies are presented with so many possible options for investment that new blockchains have a hard time competing against one another for users.

Yet, networks that truly deliver utility and transform the finance industry for the better always remain in demand. One of them is Harmony. This platform provides unlimited scalability and impressive speeds thanks to its innovative approach to sharding. Additionally, Harmony is committed to sustainability and has managed to radically minimize its impact on the environment.

Harmony ONE coin

Key Points:

  • Harmony is a blockchain which has an extremely fast speed of transactions and small fees.
  • Thanks to its Proof-of-Stake protocol, Harmony blockchain manages to keep its energy consumption rate at a low level.
  • Harmony (ONE) coin is a perfect payment option for businesses, as well as an excellent currency for donations.

About Harmony

What is Harmony?

Harmony was proposed as an ultimate solution to the problem of decentralization-scalability balance. Previously, all networks were able to achieve excellent results only with one part of this dichotomy. For instance, the Bitcoin blockchain maintains exemplary decentralization but fails to process transactions in a fast manner. Harmony offered a radically different approach which allowed it to ensure not only outstanding scalability and decentralization but also proper security. Harmony’s mainnet officially came into operation in 2019, which let the platform fully demonstrate its potential.

Key Harmony Technology

Harmony Proof-of-Stake

As mentioned earlier, Harmony relies on sharding to achieve the highest level of scalability and decentralization. Sharding involves the creation of numerous groups of validators called shards which are tasked with processing transactions concurrently. As the number of such shards grows, the network’s transaction throughput increases. Compared to other blockchains which use sharding, Harmony has several advantages. For instance, the platform’s sharding is provably secure due to the process of distributed randomness generation, which is verifiable and unpredictable. Additionally, Harmony reshards its network to avoid attacks. Moreover, Harmony utilizes the Adaptive Information Dispersal Algorithm that lets it generate blocks at a fast rate within shards. Harmony’s shards can directly communicate with one another, thus ensuring cross-shard transactions.

Harmony also maintains cross-chain interoperability with the help of its FlyClient. Harmony’s bridges are capable of connecting any Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake chains. Harmony’s bridges with Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain process tens of millions of cross-chain assets.

Harmony (ONE) Coin

Harmony ONE crypto

Harmony’s utility token is ONE which functions as the means of exchange on the network. ONE token has an excellent transaction speed thanks to Harmony’s improved Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance. It ensures 1-block-time finality. In other words, on the Harmony blockchain, a transaction gets processed as soon as its block is confirmed. Moreover, Harmony’s block time is 2 seconds which guarantees practically instant transactions. Harmony (ONE) transaction fees are also among the lowest in the industry. A transaction on Harmony’s blockchain can cost its sender as little as 0.000000001 ONE. Users can utilize their Harmony (ONE) tokens for staking and governance to earn rewards and influence the development of the network.

Harmony Sustainability

Crypto Industry’s Environmental Concerns

The main concern of environmental activists and people who care about nature is that the crypto industry leaves a massive carbon footprint. Namely, experts consider mining the main reason why the crypto industry is unsustainable. For instance, the Bitcoin blockchain’s annual consumption of electricity is comparable to that of the whole country of Argentina. While it is true that mining requires large volumes of electricity, its sources are often renewable. Nevertheless, there are still instances of miners using the energy of coal power plants, especially in Asia. Thus, mining constitutes the primary cause of the industry’s poor track record among environmentalists.

Harmony Solution

Harmony blockchain manages to keep its carbon footprint nearly non-existent thanks to its Proof-of-Stake protocol. Essentially, Harmony does not need mining in order to maintain the issuance of new coins and the security of the infrastructure. Instead, Harmony users stake their cryptocurrencies which provides them with rewards and keeps the network secure and impenetrable to attacks. Harmony’s Proof-of-Stake protocol is unlike the Proof-of-Work protocol that uses mining. It does not require any computational power to operate. People can easily stake their crypto from their mobile phones. As a result, Harmony’s energy consumption is minuscule even when compared to other Proof-of-Stake networks, even when taking into consideration the fact that Harmony processes thousands of transactions daily.

Harmony Use Cases

daVinci

daVinci Harmony

daVinci is an NFT marketplace that exists on the Harmony blockchain. Users can mint their own NFTs or purchase them. Since Harmony powers the platform, all transactions on it take two seconds which is much faster than on other marketplaces. Additionally, the price of minting an NFT on dAvinci is less than $0.01. Thanks to its Proof-of-Stake protocol, Harmony ensures that daVinci is sustainable. daVinci’s eco-friendliness, as well as fast speed of transactions and low minting fees, make it superior to the Ethereum network, another popular choice for NFT creators.

Travala.com

Travala.com

Apart from serving as a platform for numerous decentralized applications, Harmony and its token ONE, has utility outside of its ecosystem. For example, Travala.com, a booking service that lets its users rent apartments, houses, and book tours around the world, accepts Harmony (ONE) token as payment for its services. ONE holders can easily stake their crypto, earn rewards, and spend them directly at Travala.com to go on vacation.

How to Accept Harmony (ONE)

How to accept Harmony ONE
NOWPayments’ donations widget

If you own a business and want to follow the example of Travala, or perhaps wish to feature a payment option that is anonymous, secure, instant, and sustainable, then accepting ONE token should certainly be your choice. NOWPayments can assist you in deploying your ONE payment gateway.

There are several solutions you can choose from. NOWPayments offers crypto invoices that have a user-friendly design and contains all the details about the payment. All of your clients can use the same crypto invoice without any limits. Owners of e-commerce stores on platforms such as WordPress, PrestaShop, and Shopify can use special plugins which will automatically process payments of your customers.

NOWPayments also provides solutions for organizations and individuals who wish to accept Harmony (ONE) crypto donations. Anyone can deploy a crypto donation widget, button, or link on their website or social media page.

Harmony (ONE) token is a perfect option for fast and cheap transactions, which makes it ideal for paying salaries or sending other types of ONE mass payments.

Conclusion

Harmony is an innovative blockchain that took the existing solutions on the market and perfected them. Today, the Harmony network is one of the most successful projects in the crypto industry. Harmony is also a sustainable blockchain whose carbon footprint is among the smallest ones, especially compared to Proof-of-Work networks. ONE is the utility token of Harmony, which will serve as a great addition to the list of payment options of any organization.  

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