Harmony
by: Brandon DawesPosted on:

Partnerships & Praise for Harmony

From decentralized finance to location services to digital collectibles, understanding Harmony’s partners will give you a more complete picture of how it all comes together. This list will be expanded upon as the project further develops.

Major Partnerships

Harmony will be focusing on three pillars until 2020. These are (1) gaming and digital collectibles (2) decentralized finance (DeFi) and (3) privacy. These also happen to be three areas where the most disruption is possible. Each of these partnerships is therefore strategic to ensure that the Harmony ecosystem matures in all the right directions.

Animoca x Harmony

Animoca is a major publisher and developer of games headquartered in Hong Kong. It has licensed games and apps for many major brands like Atari, Garfield, Astro Boy, Ben 10, Formula One, Addams Family, Snoopy, and so much more. The company also has under its umbrella franchises like RolleCaster Tycoon and Cryptokitties.

The company’s stock is publically tradeable on the Australian Securities Exchange with a market capitalization currently at around $160M. Animoca has been aggressively moving into the blockchain industry and has tripled in value in 2019, with revenues increasing some 47% during what has been the “most successful period in the company’s history.”

“[digital collectibles] will do for blockchain adoption what physical collectibles did for companies like eBay and Amazon For internet adoption back in the 1990s.” – ANIMOCA

The company has selected Harmony as their platform-of-choice to port all their major collectibles and games over to. With Animoca, Harmony is in a position to potentially dominate blockchain-based gaming and the world of digital collectibles.

More than $5Bn in transactions were processed on the #blockchain in 2018, despite the fact that blockchain-based games are still a small but growing price of the gaming industry.

With @animocabrands & @quidd we aim to change that!

Which game would you like to play on Harmony? pic.twitter.com/xoMSPf3YPP— Harmony (@harmonyprotocol) August 27, 2019

Quidd x Harmony (acquired by Animoca for $8M)

In August, the digital collectible marketplace Quidd was purchased by Animoca for $8M in a high-profile acquisition. Harmony is the strategic technology and financial partner for Animoca’s merger with Quidd, and all their digital collectibles will be ported over to the Harmony network.

Quidd was launched in 2017 and raised some $13M during its Series A funding round. It has since purchased the rights to 325 brands from Disney, HBO, Marvel, and others. These licenses include rights to titles like Game of Thrones, Rick and Morty, Major League Baseball, Michael Jackson, and much more. In the last two years, the company has reported some $10M in revenue and has sold some 2.1B individually-serialized collectibles. However, due to scalability issues and the resulting inability to maintain its consumer base, it has failed to maintain its peak of 800,000 monthly active users on mobile which has dropped to around 200,000 monthly users currently.

Animoca and Harmony acquired Quidd to do things a bit differently—and it starts with having a more cost-effective, scalable network. Animoca will also be tapping into their growing influence in the gaming world. In fact, Animoca already has a presence in the blockchain collectibles space via Cryptokitties which they license in Asia. Together, Harmony and Animoca will leverage Quidd’s extremely large number of brand licenses and expand its digital collectibles beyond North America to include Asia.

Once ported over, this would effectively mean that Harmony would be the largest network for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the entire blockchain industry with hundreds of brands under its umbrella.

Chainlink x Harmony

It was announced in June 2019 that Chainlink plans to integrate its oracle service with Ethereum onto Harmony. The two formed a partnership with Harmony being the first network with a functioning MainNet to be given the opportunity. Chainlink is currently the leading oracle service in the blockchain world by market capitalization and impact.

Former Chainklink dev Johann Ein explained the process quite succinctly:

Essentially, Harmony will be one of the first platforms to have interoperability with Ethereum thanks to Chainlink.

Lympo x Harmony

Lympo is the first Ethereum dApp which has decided to port itself over to Harmony due to scalability issues. Its Lympo token will be reissued on Harmony on its H2O token standard.

Lympo is a health data app which measures your basic activity and performance while incentivizing you to adopt a ‘healthier lifestyle’ though rewards. Currently available in the United States and South Korea, the app has some 90,000 monthly users. Its token is one of the few to be included in Samsung’s own ‘blockchain wallet’ now available for its Galaxy S10 phones. Current advisors to the team include Taavi Roivas, Fmr. Prime Minister of Estonia, and Antanas Guoga, a Member of European Parliament for Lithuania.

Lympo has a close relationship with Samsung—its Harmony-based token will be on the Samsung Blockchain Wallet. The VP of Samsung Electronics introduced the dApp at South Korea’s biggest blockchain convention of 2019.

Lympo will prove to be a case study for how easy it is to port from Ethereum to Harmony and whether the network is scalable enough to support dApps. Given that Lympo has come on board before the addition of smart contracts on the Harmony MainNet, it seems that the team is quite confident that it will live up to its full promise.

Harmony to Scale Samsung-Support Blockchain Health Data App | Coin Telegraph

Safe Haven x Harmony

Safe Haven is a start-up which focuses on capital preservation services. Recently, they announced they would be issuing their SHA token on the Harmony blockchain. It is the second-ever project which has committed itself to issuing its token on Harmony. SHA will also be listed for trading on Harmony’s own decentralized exchange. All of Safe Haven’s flagship products will now be on Harmony.

Safe Haven is also known for creating SafeKey, a hardware security protocol which also functions like an insurance fund.

We are delighted to announce that @SafeHavenio, a startup developing a network for capital preservation solutions on the blockchain, will integrate the #HarmonyONE Mainnet into their flagship products!

Deliverables include $SHA VIP-180 token to SHA H20 https://t.co/4yHyWxD4s2— Harmony (@harmonyprotocol) October 28, 2019

Binance x Harmony

On October 15th 2019, Binance announced it would officially be supporting staking for Harmony (ONE) on its platform. All you need to do is keep your ONE tokens on Binance for passive staking. Rewards are distributed on the 20th of each month. Binance also held Harmony’s IEO on its exchange, of course.

Matic x Harmony

Matic is a leading layer-2 scaling solution which is being built to leverage Ethereum’s future Plasma proof-of-stake sidechains. Matic will work to make these ‘Ethereum 2.0’ sidechains also operate on Harmony’s network as well. Similar to Chainlink, Matic will allow for further interoperability between Harmony and Ethereum.

As a layer-2 scaling solution, Matic will allow computationally-intensive dApps on Harmony to be moved off-chain to prevent gas prices from clogging up the network. In this way, Matic’s 2nd layer protocol will help Harmony similar to how it will help Ethereum: allowing for more transaction throughput without stressing the first layer network.

The Matic network is powered by its own MATIC token and is currently valued at $30M market capitalization at the time of writing. Both MATIC and ONE are on the shortlist of 8 cryptocurrencies on the shortlist for consideration to be added on Coinbase.

Carbon x Harmony

Carbon specializes in issuing FDIC-insured and dollar-backed stablecoins on blockchain networks. They specialize in decentralized finance (DeFi), one of the pillars of Harmony’s vision. Overall, their goal is to make crypto-to-fiat conversions as simple as possible—and they have the regulatory clearance to do so.

Given that Carbon’s long-term vision is just as ambitious as Harmony’s, it’s no surprise the two are closely collaborating. Carbon plans on issuing its own USD-backed stablecoin on Harmony. Recently, it was tried on testnet with great success.

ViteX x Harmony

ViteX recently announced that it would be releasing the first-ever decentralized exchange (Dex on Harmony). All of Harmony’s tokens will be tradeable on the Harmony Dex. Orders on the exchange will be processed via smart contracts on Harmony and there will be no fees.

We are delighted to announce our partnership with @vitelabs to launch HarmonyDEX – the first decentralized exchange for digital assets issued on #HarmonyONE

The service will be provided by @ViteXExchange #DEX https://t.co/G9TqiRFyp6 pic.twitter.com/QjfX5kRPnd— Harmony (@harmonyprotocol) October 18, 2019

Hyperion x Harmony

Hyperion is a blockchain-based company specializing in data services and mapping technology. They are interested in taking concepts like ‘Google Maps’ and decentralizing them—and they’re planning on leveraging Harmony’s high-throughput platform to make this idea a reality. Hyperion also has its own token (HYN) and it is currently valued at around $20M at the time of writing, according to CoinMarketCap.

Harmony has been working with Hyperion since April 2018. The Hyperion SDK will essentially allow for easy integration of location-based and mapping services onto Harmony dApps. According to Harmony co-founder Rongjian Lan, the reason for the partnership was obvious from the start.

“With Hyperion’s expertise in map services and Harmony’s scalable blockchain infrastructure, we aim to disrupt the current centralized map service industry and bring the value back to the individual users and data contributors.”

Shyft x Harmony

Shyft is trying to build an infrastructure to manage one’s identity for our future, decentralized world. It will be working with Harmony so its privacy-protected ‘digital ID’ protocol will be easily integrated with Harmony’s decentralized applications. In effect, Shyft will prove to be a stepping stone towards standardizing digital identity management not just on Harmony but on many different networks.

With Shyft, users can verify their identity with the ‘click of a button’ in any Harmony-based dApp which runs Shyft. Shyft is also working closely with Chainlink as well to make this happen.

Other Protocols Partnered with Harmony

  • Everstake— one of the leading staking platforms in the entire cryptocurrency industry. Manages some $630M in staked assets and will be supporting Harmony staking.
  • Hydro Protocol—a blockchain startup which will allow the decentralized financial world to build DEXs for trading, built on the Harmony network.
  • Contentos—a digital marketplace where creators, consumers, and advertisers can meet to earn fairer compensation with no middleman. Some Harmony dApps will come with Contentos integration.
  • Ankr Network—a distributed computing platform which specializes in sharing computer resources in data centers and edge devices. Ankr will allow for Harmony’s dApp developers to “tap into a pool of idle [computering power] which will be vital for running off-chain computations.”
  • Photoblock—a fun, open-source decentralized authentication tool that will allow Harmony users to login with photos and emojis.
  • Taxa Network—a layer-2 solution that will be built on top of Harmony’s mainnet for efficient, privacy-preserving smart contracts.
  • HonestMining—an up-and-coming staking platform which currently offers options for those who want to stake Harmony but have less than 1M ONE. As of now, all 20 spots are completely full.
  • Hummingbot—an open source, market making bot which is closely partnered with the Harmony team. ONE trading consistently tops the bot’s activities.

Having read about all of these partnerships, it should be much clearer now how the Harmony ecosystem will come together.

Praise for Harmony

Charles Hoskinson, Co-founder of Ethereum and Founder of Cardano

Had EOS released a whitepaper like Harmony: https://t.co/fUiN9t0Bcd then I would have least said hey had some interesting ideas. I really wish people brought more rigor and made better use of active research in their product development.— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) May 23, 2019

Vitalik Buterin, Co-founder of Ethereum

“Interesting! I’ve thought before about using non-censorship of transactions as a soft validity condition for blocks, but my conclusion has generally been that it would lead to too much network instability if there’s disagreement about what txs have been published. But using censorship detection as an input to vote on view changes is an interesting approach!”

Comment in response to Staking Mechanism and Token Incentives Design of Harmony (May 2019)

Zaki Manian, Head of Research at Tendermint of Cosmos Network

As far as I can tell, Harmony is the first blockchain with a functional PBFT view change. https://t.co/jlOPbNXjGB— Zaki Manian (@zmanian) June 9, 2019

Eric Ly, Co-founder of LinkedIn

honored to be interviewed by @hubtoken ceo @ericly (cofounder/ex-cto of @LinkedIn, @generalmagicco) on google’s #tgi culture, open community, data sharing vs #privacy and @binance ieo. visionary yet humble, eric embodies the original magic of #hungry & #foolish in silicon valley. pic.twitter.com/oZvkK9v4WK— stephen tse (@stse) July 20, 2019

Defiprime

“Harmony is the only Ethereum competitor who gets it right.”

“It’s the only Ethereum competitor who gets it right.”

Strong praise for #HarmonyONE from @defiprime! Read more about decentralized finance (#DeFi) on Harmony in last week’s special reading. https://t.co/jEhxeXoFSk— HarmonyNews.one (@HarmonyNewsOne) November 13, 2019

Christy Choi, Director of Binance Labs

Winner of the #Outliers Growth Award

#Outliers is a venture accelerator which recognizes start-ups with the best growth potential in the fintech world. Despite the tough competition, the 300 judges chose Harmony has their winner—and the team was officially given the #Outliers Growth Award. Congrats Harmony!

Congrats to the #HarmonyONE team for taking home the @hashoutliers Growth Award—and for being recognized as one of the leading startups by 300 judges from across the fintech industry! https://t.co/tvhhFnIdnV— HarmonyNews.one (@HarmonyNewsOne) November 1, 2019

Draper University

Draper University as founded by billionaire investor, cryptocurrency fan, and venture capitalist Tim Draper. The for-profit school specializes in business and is located in San Mateo, California. It was founded in 2012.

Recently, Harmony co-founder Nick White was invited to speak at the university. The Draper University folks decided to subsequently visit the Harmony headquarters—it seems like they were impressed with what they found!

Come back anytime! https://t.co/WziN8Ltd8y— Draper University (@draper_u) October 23, 2019

Michael K. Spencer, Prolific Author and Futurist

“Silicon Valley is getting serious about the blockchain…” writes Spencer who speaks glowingly about his positive experience talking to team members of Harmony when it was still much younger.

Alexander Skidanov, Co-founder of NEAR Protocol

“Harmony builds a sharded blockchain and is based on many state of the art techniques, such as using VDFs for unbiasable randomness and leveraging RaptorQ for faster block propagation.”

Sergii Vasylchuk, CEO & Founder of Everstake

“We believe that Harmony is capable of solving all current challenges the modern blockchain technology is facing, and we will continue supporting the platform. Moreover, we are planning to launch the development of several projects for Harmony, that will improve the usability and comfort of the platform, starting from its early adopters.”

Joshua Larson, Writer for HackedEverstake Partners with Harmony (August, 2019)

“What I can tell you after looking deep into this company is these guys are ‘THE REAL DEAL HOLYFIELD,’ and this project has the potential to be a top 5 token for all of crypto.”