Microtransactions will be the key to driving a massive retail revolution. However, gas prices as high as $10 for a single transaction ring the bell for users. Ethereum’s average gas prices have maxed out in the last four years at the time of writing. With over $50 billion in TVL locked in DeFi on Ethereum, small investors are the ones to experience cash burn.
What’s the way out, then? Layer 2 solutions. Maybe, but users have to choose between scalability or security. Those ecosystems which promise high scalability and security have fewer validator nodes. In contrast, those with high decentralization have less scope for scalability and throughput.
The Harmony chain manages both these aspects via sharding. Using adaptive threshold POS, the Harmony chain promises cross-chain operations, security, and lower transaction fees.
Will Harmony Become a Big Project?
Harmony chain has the potential to be the next big thing because of the following reasons;
Sharding
Harmony has been quite fast in launching the concept of sharding. Currently, the ecosystem has introduced 4 shards. Each of the shards could process more than 500 transactions per second. Hence, it totals 2000 TPS. The developers have plans to introduce more shards in the coming timeframe.
A 2-second transaction finality could potentially bring the entire banking and financial system to the Harmony chain. On top of this, Harmony uses slashing to check the validators on its ecosystem. At the same time, with as low as 1,000 One token for staking with a 10% ROI, Harmony sounds much like a better investment.
Building Robust Ecosystem
On September 9, Harmony announced a $300 million ecosystem development fund. Harmony plans to set up 100 DAOs, 1000 bounties, 500 launches, 50 investments, and 10 hackathons using these funds. At the One World Conference, the Harmony Protocol awarded grants to 10 new projects.
Aggressive Marketing
The Harmony chain has adopted an aggressive marketing strategy. For raising mass level awareness, it is using One World Conference in Lisbon. In this way, new developers will likely connect to build the ecosystem further. Even the token price rallied from $.22 to a new all-time high after this announcement.
Conclusion
The crypto space has for long wanted to come out of the blockchain trilemma. Zilliqa paved the way for the same. Nevertheless, structural challenges prevented the project from taking off. Harmony has worked on such areas through secured sharding and energy-efficient POS consensus mechanisms to encourage sustainable development of the crypto space.
Notes:
POS or Proof of Stake is a consensus mechanism where validators need to stake crypto tokens to validate transactions.
