NOWNodes is thrilled to announce that we now offer access to a Harmony (ONE) node – a blockchain built for facilitated dApp creation. The innovative Harmony network finalizes transactions in 2 seconds at extremely low fees.
Everyone building on Harmony can enjoy its robust infrastructure, and NOWNodes offers this opportunity via API. Here’s your quick Harmony review and a guide on connecting to a Harmony node.
What Is a Harmony (ONE) Node?
Harmony mainnet went live in June 2019. It comprises 4 shards (250 nodes each) that interact via the Effective Proof of Stake consensus. Stakes are evenly assigned to shards so that they are equally secure.
Harmony focuses on decentralization – its nodes are operated and governed by a large community of enthusiasts. Stakers who invest ONE can run nodes, and their computing power becomes part of the network.
A Harmony node gives you the opportunity to build on the ONE network – one of the most rapidly growing and primising blockchains with smart contract functionality. You can build a dApp, a wallet, or any other service to take advantage of this thriving ecosystem.
Advantages of ONE node
Harmony nodes form the Harmony network that boasts the following advantages:
- Shards for security. Sharding is a way to scale the blockchain without harming security and decentralization, which proposes a solution to the famous blockchain trilemma. Harmony shards are attack-resistant since stakers and block validators randomly switch between shards. To make shards more secure, Harmony assigns 250 nodes to each and enables cryptographic randomness for re-sharding.
- Fast consensus for instant transaction finality. Harmony has implemented its own modification of the extensively tested Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) protocol to achieve fast consensus of blocks. Harmony’s Fast BFT (FBFT) finalizes transactions within a single block that gets added every 1-2 seconds, which allows for low fees.
- Cross-chain interoperability for easier asset management. Harmony aims to facilitate the cross-chain transfer of funds and creates bridges to PoW and PoS networks. Millions of cross-chain transactions pass bridges connecting Harmony with Etherem, Bitcoin, and Binance Smart Chain.
- Effective Proof of Stake for better security. Harmony has its own modification of Proof of Stake that is called Effective PoS – it’s a consensus that leverages sharding to prevent centralization. The validators with bigger stakes have to maintain more nodes. The algorithm randomly assigns stakes to different shards so they are all secure. Validators who double-sign are slashed, and nodes that are elected but unavailable are penalized.
Harmony network has been run by a strong team since 2017. Back then, the platform was conceived by twelve co-founders who are former employees at Microsoft, Google, and Apple. The CEO of Harmony is Stephen Tse – a specialist in cryptographic protocols who has a Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania.
How to Connect to a Harmony Node?
If you want to take advantage of Harmony and start building with a ONE node, you can start doing so today. NOWNodes grants access to the Harmony node via a robust API that has a less-than-a-second response time and a 99.95% uptime rate. To connect to the node, get a free API key by submitting your email on our main page. You will receive the key in just a few seconds. Use it with the sample requests found in our docs, and we hope you will have a great experience with Harmony and NOWNodes!
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