Harmony Embraces Multichain Future of Blockchain

DeFi products among the first adopters of multichain services

As a blockchain solution, Harmony has a perfect position to fit in with the multichain future the blockchain industry is heading towards. A variety of DeFi protocols have been making efforts in launching their products across different blockchains, and Harmony can give this multichain future a significant boost.

Even though many still consider Bitcoin and Ethereum to be a gold standard for blockchain technology, the realization has come that more is needed. Blockchain technology needs a friendlier user experience with fast transactions and low cost. In addition, one might argue that the need for a low carbon footprint has also become very important. 

As Ethereum has been hampered by its own success, DeFi and gaming products migrated to other solutions. 1inch launched its aggregator on Polygon and Binance Smart Chain, while for example SushiSwap and Aave also expanded their services to other blockchains. Also in the world of gaming, developers prefer a user experience with low fees. That’s why projects like The Sandbox, Cometh, Aavegotchi and F1 Delta Time moved over to Polygon. 

Each of these projects looks for the best, cheapest, fastest solutions for their users. In addition, users need to be able to move their assets from one blockchain to the other in a smooth way. Bridging technology exists, but there’s still lots of space for improvement. 

That’s where Harmony comes into play.

How Harmony builds the multichain future

Many blockchains operate on their own, while some offer bridging technology. Harmony wants to become the one bridge to all blockchains. It’s an open platform for assets like tokens and NFTs, for collectibles, game items, but also identity governance. 

The Harmony mainnet has been live for quite some time, and the developers keep improving the ecosystem. Right now Ethereum dapps run on Harmony with 2-second transaction finality, and fees that are 100 times lower. Users can smoothly move their assets using secure bridges from Harmony to other blockchains, for example Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain. 

Harmony wants to be the bridge that crosses all blockchains, and is already spreading its native token across the ecosystem. SushiSwap is now active on Harmony blockchain, but the native ONE token can also be traded on Ethereum. It’s an example of Harmony’s ambition to be omnipresent. 

Harmony wants their solution to be interoperable with different Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake blockchains. This interoperability goes beyond for example Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain, which both are EVM compatible. Firstly Harmony’s FlyClient cross-chain solution is being made to support Bitcoin, and it would bring Wrapped BTC (wBTC) to Harmony. In addition a bridge with Polkadot allows developers on Harmony to use Polkadot’s WebAssembly and para-chain tooling by extension.

Closing thoughts

The future of blockchain isn’t centralized on one blockchain. Just like blockchain brings decentralization to existing markets, the technology itself will also be decentralized. Allowing users to smoothly transfer value from one chain to the other, will be crucial for growth and adoption. Harmony has a role to play in this cross-chain, multichain future. 

DappRadar will integrate Harmony into its dapp discovery platform later this year. With DappRadar integration coming up, there’s no better time to start bringing dapps to Harmony.

How to setup Harmony in Metamask

1. Open Metamask, click the network drop-down menu on top
2. At the bottom of the menu, select Custom RPC
3. Fill in the info below:
   1. Network name: Harmony
   2. New RPC URL: https://api.harmony.one
   3. Chain ID: 1666600000
   4. Currency: ONE
   5. Block explorer: https://explorer.harmony.one 
4. Click SAVE. 
5. You can now select Harmony from the network drop-down menu and start interacting with dapps on the Harmony blockchain.