Harmony A Solution To Scalability Problems
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When Bitcoin was born in 2008 nobody was expected that 10 years later it will reach the popularity, influence, and price we see today. With the birth of Bitcoin, decentralized money became a reality and today we see how the networks that use blockchain are popularized very quickly thanks to all the services and advantages they offer. However, the Bitcoin blockchain encountered an inconvenience and its performance, as it became popular, its limitations began to be observed and this blockchain can only process 7 transactions per second, which is insufficient for its massive use.
A few years later in 2014, Ethereum was born that managed new services such as smart contracts that are very popular today. However, the scalability problem was not solved at all because its blockchain can only process around 15 transactions per second, which prevented applications that require high performance from running on this network.
Then we see the birth of other projects such as "EOS" or "IOTA". That although they presented solutions to this problem. But they found it impossible to improve performance without having to ignore other critical aspects such as security and decentralization.
Now we see that the real solution to the problems of scalability, without affecting decentralization and security is fragmentation. This works by creating several fragments (groups of validators) which allows several transactions to be executed and confirmed simultaneously. With this it is achieved that while the number of transactions increases the level of performance also grows by increasing the number of fragments.
The first blockchain to use fragmentation was "Zilliqa". But he failed to solve the whole problem. Because of their characteristics, machines with fewer resources could not participate in the network. In addition to its mechanism of randomness was limited, which affected the fragmentation process.
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Harmony The True Solution
Harmony has arrived to solve the problems that others have not been able to eradicate. Harmony is a blockchain based on fragmentation, and is characterized by being scalable without limitations. It also provides great security and is very energy efficient. Combining the best engineering practices and constant research, a system that works very well and meets the requirements was born.
Harmony is fully scalable because it fragments communication, transaction and blockchain status. In addition to this, it provides 100% secure fragmentation, since it uses DRG which makes it unpredictable and fully verifiable.
There are other blockchain networks that use the fragmentation system but require PoW to select the validators which makes the process less fast and efficient. But Harmony because it uses PoS is more efficient.
Harmony has greatly improved what has been done by other blockchain networks. Thanks to Harmony we now have a scalable, secure and decentralized blockchain. Thanks to this new applications that previously could not make use of the blockchain, can now be enabled since the limitations are minimal, creating a true economy that is radically fair.
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Consensus mechanisms
Consensus protocols are key aspects in any blockchain. Since thanks to this you can judge the security of the system. Blockchain like Bitcoin use the PoW protocol, which is a process where miners must assemble a cryptographic puzzle, and the winner gets the right to propose the next block and also earns some rewards.
There are other types of consensus protocols such as the PBFT (Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance). With this protocol a node is chosen as "leader" while the rest of the nodes are "validators". The "leader" transmits his proposal to the "validators" who in turn transmit their votes on the proposal. But this protocol makes the system non-scalable in a blockchain system due to the complexity of the communication.
Harmony has improved these protocols and created a new one, which is fully scalable, since the complexity of the communication is minimal. This protocol has been baptized with FBFT (Fast Byzantine Fault Tolerance). And instead of asking all the validators to cast their votes, the leader executes a signature with multiple signatures and then collect the votes of the validators. In summary, each validator receives a multiple signature thus minimizing the complexity of communication.
Sharding
Already at the end of 2017 Blockchain fragmentation as the solution to scalability problems has become popular. And there have been very striking projects but Harmony has managed to mix the best of each project in order to obtain a high-performance blockchain, with guaranteed safety and quality. Ensuring randomness. It also uses cryptography based on VRF (verifiable random function).
Times
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An epoch is a certain time interval. Harmony uses a process of consensus and fragmentation controlled by the concept of epochs. At the beginning of each era a random number is generated using the DRG protocol, and the fragmentation structure will be determined based on that randomness.
Security
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Being able to prevent an attack is perhaps the key to a blockchain being considered safe. Bitcoin and Ethereum use the PoW system before anyone can propose a block. Harmony uses a different system when using the Participation Test (PoS) as a validator record. All participants in the chain must bet a certain amount of tokens to be eligible. Depending on the number of tokens wagered, the number of voting shares assigned to each validator will be determined.
An Ideal Team
It is known that the success that a project can have depends on the team that develops the project. The Harmony team is characterized by This formed by great experts, both in business and engineering, all with the common goal of making a better world. Each member has experience in both industry and academia. The level of demand is very high, so this team is only made up of very talented and successful people who have already demonstrated their skills.
PANGEA
This is an experimental area, where people can interact with the Harmony reb, testing the limitations of this technology while having fun while having the chance to earn some rewards. It is worth clarifying that Pangea only has experimental purposes.
Pangea in its first 24 Hours obtained very good results reaching 138 nodes in operation, in addition to 1283 subscribers in 77 countries, and 356 keys were downloaded.
Pangea Objectives
- That users can try the next updates of the Harmony central protocol, for example the rethinking of smart contracts and reorganization, in a magazine in which all nodes are external.
- Configure and prepare a large number of nodes that will then be used in the main Harmony network.
- Identify and reward the members of the community that helps the development and security of Harmony, who are also willing to make an additional effort assuming leadership in the community of validators.
Use cases
Dapps:
Blockchain networks are becoming increasingly popular and developers see great potential in the use of blockchain for application creation. However, not all blockchains can support the massive use of applications. For example, a messaging application that runs on a blockchain such as Bitcoin and is used massively would cause the network to collapse making very slow transactions, however with Harmony this type of applications would have no problem because Harmony can process up to 118,000 transactions per second.
Games:
We already have the example of Cryptokitties that attracted a lot of user attention, but in a few hours it blocked the entire Ethereum Network. A similar game that runs on the Harmony network would be very fluid and would not present problems like the one that happened to the Ethereum network. Harmony's ability is one of the best and will surely attract game developers, which can be used massively without complications.
Financial Sites:
The amounts of money perhaps moving in blockchain networks is increasing, the need to be able to make instant transactions is one of the main needs of blockchain networks if they want to continue growing, the Ethereum network has not been able to keep up day with the demand affecting the speed, and with the passing of time maybe the speed problems worsen with the growth of the industry, however Harmony guarantees scalability so the speed of the transactions will not be a problem, and can be used massively in networks payment processors, sites that require smart contracts and others.
