Harmony ICO Review

Overview

Harmony is trying to fix the number one problem in blockchain technology: scalability. The platform has the objective to enable 10 million transactions per second on a distributed ledger. This goes far beyond what leading blockchain networks can deliver today and even beyond the ambitions of platforms that are currently considered as highly scalable.

Just as other base layer protocols Harmony enables anyone to create an application without a central authority on top of the platform. Just as currently for Ethereum, the team projects that decentralized exchanges will be among the first adopters of the platform which will later on host all kind of decentralized apps.

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How advanced is the project?

The team has developed a first version and a compiler for the native Min programming language. A prototype was developed that establishes consensus with Byzantine fault tolerance and the testnet achieved 10,000 transactions per second. Harmony claims to have raised a 18 million USD Seed round and is aggressively hiring new talent. The investors have not been publicly disclosed. Most of the team members and founders joined Harmony very recently.

What are the tokens used for and how can the token value appreciate?

Since Harmony is a base layer protocol designed for building applications on top of it the mechanics of the token will be similar to other tokens in this field. The market capitalization of the token will increase with the usage of the platform. The vesting of the tokens for founders takes four years.

Team & Advisors

Harmony is founded by a diversified and skilled team, that counts with experience in blockchain, machine learning and scaling of technology products. The founders and engineers previously worked for top tier Silicon Valley companies.

Stephen Tse is the founder of Harmony. He previously worked as an engineer and researcher for Google, Microsoft and Apple and founded a startup that later on was acquired by Apple. He holds a PhD from University of Pennsylvania in cryptography.

Nicolas Burtey is a co-founder and the COO of Harmony. He is a previous VR entrepreneur and has a bachelor in mathematics and computer science.

Alok Kothari is a co-founder at Harmony and previously worked at Apple’s Siri in the machine learning area, particularly in the natural language processing field. He holds a Master degree in Artificial Intelligence form Carnegie Mellon University.

Rongjian Lan is a co-founder at Harmony and a previous Google engineer. He is also the co-chair of the ABC blockchain foundation that connects engineers from companies such as Google and Facebook. He holds a Master degree in Computer Science form University of Maryland College Park.

Minh Doan is a co-founder at Harmony and a previous engineer at Google with more than 5 years of experience. He holds a Master degree in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics from Moscow State University.

Nick White is another co-founder at Harmony and specialized in Artificial Intelligence. He is responsible for community development.

Sahil Dean is a co-founder at Harmony and a previous entrepreneur.

Several other people are involved in the Harmony project in fields such as system architecture, business development and research.

Among the advisors of Harmony are several remarkable people that have experience in machine learning, software development and blockchain and worked at companies like Google, Alibaba, Microsoft and IBM. Overall, among the team and the advisors many individuals count with some sort of connection to Google.

Product

Harmony has the objective to use the most recent knowledge from blockchain research and to ship viable blockchain products based on this knowledge. By building scalable blockchain solutions Harmony believes that the foundations are set so that mainstream adoption of the technology can start.

Harmony is building on top of OmniLedger. OmniLedger is a secure and permissionless distributed ledger that uses sharding and was presented in a research paper by various blockchain scientist. Harmony is not building from scratch, but instead taking advantage of the research conducted and wants to improve on the design of OmniLedger. Further technical innovations, such as Google UDP, will be used by Harmony. Harmony has designed Min, a new programming language, targeting to enable unhackable systems.

Strength and Opportunities

Harmony communicates transparently about topics such as team member’s engagement, distribution of tokens and use of proceeds. The project has a multi-year vesting scheme for founder’s equity in place which is an incentive for the team to deliver on the promises made.

Many of Harmony’s product design decisions are based on recent research and are not arbitrary. The design decisions taken by the management are explained in a comprehensive manner and make sense.

Weaknesses and Threats

There is strong competition from both, established blockchain platforms such as Zilliqa and also new ICO projects. Also leading platforms like Ethereum are working hard to implement scalability solutions. These established blockchain platforms count with large developer communities and a proven record of immutability. Because blockchain adoption comes with a network effect it will be very hard for a new blockchain such as Harmony to overtake these considerably older platforms.

Just as other blockchain platforms Harmony in the end will ship open source code. Knowledge in blockchain development is easily shared and can be duplicated. This setup gives the blockchains that were created earlier an advantage because of network effects. Established platforms are free to change their consensus mechanism and adopt different protocols. A key factor for the success of a blockchain network is its number of adopters. Blockchain projects that were started earlier and have already gained a large number of community members and a solid developer base have a significant advantage.

Verdict

Harmony is trying to solve the most urgent and difficult problem in blockchain technology. Their approach and concept would not be credible if it were not for such a competent and skilled team. The founders have already achieved remarkable things in the past and count with a rich and diverse experience. Still, the successful implementation of the concept will be hard but is crucial for the success of the project beyond the ICO stage.

Our Overall Rating: A-

Team: A

Investors and Advisors: A

Concept/Idea: B+

Stage of development: A-

Community Strength: B+

? URL: harmony.one
? TG: https://t.me/harmony_announcements

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* The information contained in this article is for education purpose only and not financial advice. Do your own research before making any investment decisions.