• Harmony is a fast and secure blockchain for decentralized applications. Harmony's main focus is on achieving scalability by dividing not only the network nodes but also the blockchain states into shards, "scaling linearly in all three aspects of machines, transactions and storage".

• Harmony's sharding benefits by Verifiable Random Functions for secure and random state sharding. The consensus mechanism of Harmony, Effective Proof-of-Stake, innovates on Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus mechanisms to further reduce centralization, while supporting stake delegation, reward compounding and double-sign slashing.

• Its utility token, ONE, is running on Harmony's mainnet since June 2019 and is prospected to reach an annual inflation of 3%. The token must be used as stake for network validators and is required to initiate transactions.

1. What is Harmony (ONE)?

Harmony is a fast and secure blockchain with key innovations in state sharding and peer-to-peer networking. Its sharding uses secure proof-of-stake and decentralized randomness, and its networking achieves optimal cross-shard routing and fast block propagation.

Harmony helps businesses build marketplaces of fungible tokens (such as energy credits and loyalty points) and non-fungible assets (such as game collectibles and real estate).

Harmony is applying zero-knowledge proofs for data sharing while preserving the consumer's privacy. Common industry use cases include ad exchanges, credit ratings and many other data consortia that would otherwise take many years to form among competing companies.

Harmony implements deep sharding with innovations on both protocol and networking layers of blockchain by introducing:

• Highly scalable FBFT (Fast Byzantine Fault Tolerant) consensus using BLS (Boneh-Lynn-Shacham) multi-signatures.

• Secure distributed randomness generation protocol using VDF (Verifiable Delay Function).

• Sharding with adaptive Proof-of-Stake for strong network security.

• Kademlia routing and erasure encoding for optimal network performance.

Some of Harmony's points of differentiation include:

• Key innovations in state sharding (secure staking & resharding with decentralized randomness) and in peer-to-peer networking (optimal cross-shard routing, fast block propagation).

• Harmony is a POS-based state-sharding protocol, while existing protocol projects are mostly POW-based.

• Harmony's consensus is a fast BFT algorithm which uses BLS multi-sig and scales linearly with the number of nodes, while many existing projects uses the old single chain-based consensus (same as Bitcoin).

• Harmony's consensus doesn't have forks and has instant finality, while existing chains have forks and no instant finality.

• Harmony's cross-shard communication is sublinearly efficient due to the use of Kademlia routing and Erasure Encoding.

Token overview and use cases

Harmony's scalable, high-throughput protocol is powered by a native token which is used for various forms of payment and participation in the protocol (staking, transaction fees, voting & governance).

Harmony uses blockchain to align incentives of different stakeholders, developers and businesses while allowing them to build open marketplaces of fungible and non-fungible tokens and assets. Furthermore, the upcoming application of zero-knowledge proofs will allow Harmony to become a data sharing platform that can overcome the conflicting problem plaguing many information and data markets: that individual market participants' have mutual distrust to share data but strong desire to acquire data themselves.

The Harmony token functions in the following aspects of the protocol:

• The token is used for staking, which is necessary to participate in the POS consensus & earn block rewards and transaction fees.

• The token is used to pay for transaction fees, gas and storage fees.

• The token is used in voting for on-chain governance of the protocol.

2. Key products

2.1 Testnet overview

In Q3 2018, the Harmony team deployed a network of 40,000 AWS/GCP/Azure instances (nodes) in 100 separate shards (400 nodes each). The peak performance of the overall network was recorded at a rate of 118,000 TPS. The test block size was roughly 2 megabytes, and the average test transaction size was around 250 bytes.

In December 2018, the Harmony team achieved a block sync time of 1.36 seconds by implementing an adaptive IDA protocol.

The team then subsequently released several Testnet versions with the latest Testnet 3.0 in April 2019. The testnet 3.0 has been running reliably for over one month since launch, generating 220k+ blocks

The Harmony wallet, explorer and testnet documentation here.

A block explorer of Harmony's multi-sharded network is also available here.

2.2 Demo app and product launch

The team recently launched the Harmony Lottery (to demonstrate its decentralized randomness) with hundreds of users on the first day. Harmony will also be launching Harmony Puzzle on Contentos platform to engage 50k+ users.

Each level of Harmony Puzzle is recorded on the Harmony testnet explorer and can be viewed during or after the game play.

The player should first play the game until the end (either ending at "Game Over" or winning all of the levels) and then click on the Harmony logo to be directed to the explorer for that specific game.

A player's move is shown in the "Sequence" line below. In this example, the player's moves were "UURDDLU" or "up-up-right-down-down-left-up".

3. Economics and supply

3.1 Key metrics

3.2 Token supply distribution

• Seed sale tokens comprise 22.4% of the total supply. It was completed in May 2018 and raised a total of ~$18.3MM at ~$0.0065 per token, selling 22.4% of the total token supply.

• Launchpad sale tokens comprise 12.5% of the total supply. It was be conducted successfully on May 2019 for a total raise of ~$5MM USD worth of BNB at ~$0.003175 per token for 12.5% of the total token supply. ONE/BNB exchange rate will be determined prior to day of sale.

• Team tokens comprise 16.9% of the total supply.

• Protocol development tokens comprise 26.4% of the total supply.

• Ecosystem development tokens comprise 21.8% of the total supply.

ONE token distribution (%)

3.3 Harmony token ecosystem

Harmony's open, decentralized network is enabled through the use of the native protocol token - Harmony ONE. The token incentivizes and rewards a variety of participants including developers, validators/stakers, investors, and community members who develop, secure and govern the network. In order to use the network, users pay a small transaction fee denominated in the native Harmony token.

3.4 Token governance and use of funds

As of May 2019, Harmony has used approximately 37% of TGE funds according to the allocations below:

• 65% Core Team & Protocol Development

• 15% Marketing & Community

• 15% Professional Services

• 5% Administrative & Office

ONE token release schedule

The following chart represents the number and breakdown of all ONE tokens that are intended to be released into circulation on a monthly basis.

Team tokens are locked until 2020 with 4-year vesting.

ONE token release schedule

4. Roadmap, updates, and business development

4.1 Original roadmap

Features of each Harmony Testnet versions are listed below:

2019/02 Harmony Testnet 1.0

• Faster consensus using BLS multi-signatures & gossiping broadcast.

• Node staking on beacon chain using smart contracts.

• Secure resharding with Cuckoo Rule.

• Robust peer discovery via libp2p bootnodes & Kademlia routing.

2019/03 Harmony Testnet 2.0

• Instructions for nodes on home networks with NAT Port Mapping Protocol (NAT-PMP), Port Control Protocol (PCP), and Internet Gateway Device (IGD) Control Protocol.

• Deployment of Solidity smart contracts, demo apps such as lottery.

• Full persistence with archival node, on-chain transaction storage.

• Beacon-shard syncing, proof-of-concept for Verifiable Delay Function (VDF).

• Hybrid ECDSA (cold keys for staking) and BLS (hot keys for block validation).

2019/04 Harmony Testnet 3.0

• A network with peer-to-peer (p2p) using 1 beacon shard + 3 consensus shards.

• Cuckoo-rule resharding at 10% reshuffle rate and auto-restarting nodes.

• Genesis shard state, new nodes for staking, state sync for beacon chain.

• Researching into porting zkproof prototypes such as zkDAI and zkERC20 to Harmony.

4.2 Updated roadmap

Q2 2019

• Cross-shard communication.

• Harmony Game of Stakes.

• Throttled mainnet launch.

Q3 2019

• Kademlia routing.

• Rateless erasure code.

• Fast state sync.

• WASM Prototype.

• Full mainnet launch.

Q4 2019

• Porting zero-knowledge proof dApps.

• Production services for partners.

4.3 Commercial partnership and business development progress

Harmony has a robust ecosystem building strategy focused on creating partnerships that drive adoption of the protocol across a variety of core use cases and verticals including gaming, data sharing, open marketplaces, provenance and supply chain tracking. At scale, Harmony helps businesses tokenize their assets and incentivize user engagement.

Notable key partners include (parent company of game assets like Garfield), (a content platform with 60M monthly users), and (a calendar-based service marketplace).

• Animoca Brands: global game developer of Garfield, Doraemon, and Astro Boy. Harmony is working with Animoca to build ERC721-compatible gaming assets and digital collectibles.

• CoinXP: decentralized exchange, partnering with Harmony to run on our infrastructure.

• Contentos: 60m MAU media application ecosystem. Harmony is launching dApps on Contentos' media ecosystem.

• GSVlabs: innovation center accelerating innovation for startups and Fortune 500 companies. Harmony is working with GSVlabs on implementing enterprise-grade solutions on public blockchain.

• hBits: tokenizes real estate and gives investors access to earn interest on commercial real estate investments through fractional ownership. Harmony is building the token protocol for hBit's real estate token origination and exchange.

• Hyperion: decentralized mapping platform. Harmony provides the decentralized network for Hyperion to build the map layer on top of.

• NoIZ: blockchain-native advertising delivery platform that rewards consumers. Harmony is building with NoIZ a decentralized advertising ecosystem that protects user data privacy and rewards users for consuming advertising.

• Picolo: decentralized database.Harmony is supporting Picolo database product on its protocol.

• Qokka: prediction and sentiment analysis engine to analyze and understand language. Harmony is working with Qokka on data analytics on blockchain.

• Quanta: decentralized exchange. Harmony has developed the true randomness generation and infrastructure to support Quanta.

• Rymedi: FDA-approved patient tracking company. Exploring using Harmony infrastructure for patient health tracking.

• Timeless: calendar app that connects users with services. Harmony is building the open marketplace infrastructure that powers the service economy on Timeless.

5. Project team

6. Harmony's activity and community overview

6.1 Social and community data

Strategy

Since early 2017, the Harmony founding team has been hosting a weekly 4-hour gathering of entrepreneurs in the Bay Area to organically grow their team and community of partners.

The Harmony team has focused on a hybrid online/offline strategy to engage its community. The offline and online presences are split between three key strategies: content, channel, & ecosystem.

Channel strategy

• Growing global community - Harmony currently has 10 country-specific communities around the world. Local ambassadors manage community channels, offline presence, and media outlets (local platforms focused on videos and articles). The team aims to grow the size of existing community channels (Telegram, Discord, Twitter, etc) and grow to 20 country-specific communities.

• Content & events - develop content around main Harmony initiatives and events

  • Q2 - Harmony Game of Stakes and Mainnet Launch preparation

  • Q2 - Crypto Mondays San Francisco (1,000 members) - inviting thought leaders

  • Q2 -BUIDL Seoul and Cosmos hackATOM

  • Q2 - Blockchain Beach Los Angeles and Disruption Disciples, a PWC-sponsored global events series

• Engage key opinion leaders - work with KOLs on AMAs and online educational sessions to engage their communities and followers about Harmony

• Email Engagement - Convert more users to join Harmony mailing list (7,000 current subscribers)

Ecosystem strategy

• Ecosystem Building - build out tooling and help on-board dApps to Harmony

  • Q2 - Hackathons - engage dApp developers to build on Harmony through Hackathons, Competition, and Rewards

  • Q2 - Technical Bounties - working with developers to start migrating applications using Harmony tools and SDKs.

• Staking Education and GoS Participation for community

  • Q2 - Game of Stakes - opening a program to allow validators to earn rewards by stress testing the Harmony network. Validators and community members can learn about Harmony's technology and staking in a Fantasy sports type format.

Bounty program

Harmony has been open source since January 2019 and has over 2,700 commits with over 100 stars from the community. Its team actively engages in technical discussions online on the Harmony Discourse forum at talk.harmony.one and on Discord. In Q1 2019, Harmony also announced a $1M USD worth of Harmony tokens technical bounty on Gitcoin to build out a full suite of developer tools with the goal of being the most accessible platform for developers to build on.

Social media channels

Telegram (English)
Telegram Announcement (English)
Twitter (English)
Discord (English)
Medium (English)
Facebook (English)
Youtube (English)
Official Harmony Forum

7. Appendix

7.1 Node operator program

• Opentoken (Non US): harmony.one/token

• CoinList (US): harmony.one/coinlist

• Details about Foundational Nodes: harmony.one/node

• Steps to run a node on Testnet: harmony.one/nodes

7.2 Reports and updates

• Annual Letter: harmony.one/annual-letter

• Overview & Milestones: harmony.one/milestones

• Binance Report: harmony.one/binance-report

• Deck: harmony.one/deck

• Newsletter: harmony.one/news

• FAQ: harmony.one/faq

7.3 Advisors

• Hakwan Lau

• Ka-yuet Liu

• Zi Wang

• Bruce Huang