[This is an extended transcript of Harmony’s talks at Ethereal Summit and at ex-Googler TGI in Q2 2021.]
Hello, everyone. My name is Stephen, the founder of Harmony. Our team has been building a scalable blockchain for three years. Today I’d like to share our vision of interoperability and our focus on adoption through on-chain wallets.
My research background is security protocols and formal verification. Our team of 20 has extensive background at Google, Apple, Amazon and Harvard as infrastructure builders. Harmony, with our mainnet launched in 2019, is now ready for scaling DeFi and NFT applications across Ethereum and other chains.
Harmony’s 2021 roadmap is “Scaling Cross-Chain Finance”. In just a few months, our ecosystem has grown more than 10x to have $540m staked with 109 validators. We support on-chain delegations and there are 11k delegators. Currently 41 applications such as marketplaces, governance, and prediction markets are deployed on our mainnet, totaling 3.05m transactions and 77.8k wallets. Among the 2 bridges and 4 decentralized exchanges, Harmony network secures $52m worth of assets across multiple chains.
One of our most engaging applications is the daVinci Gallery, an NFT marketplace. Harmony supports low-carbon footprint for #GreenNFT minting and airdrop. Launched just two months ago, the daVinci Gallery has listed 7,639 pieces and sold $269k worth of collectibles from 865 artists. Our beautiful interface also features full-service curation and auction for internationally-renowned artists. (more)
How will Harmony drive adoption for the next one million consumers? An on-chain wallet giving 20% yields. Users must stop worrying about seed phrases, device loss, email phishing, phone hijacking. We must secure everyone’s financial future against password breaches, software bugs, platform malwares and exchange hacks. It’s a path towards universal basic income for anyone with just a few thousand dollars and no technical background.
Many staking protocols offer 10% yields, lending protocols offer 10%, and liquidity pools offer 20%. Our opportunity is to offer consumers the ability to earn fixed-rate interests through structured financial products across multiple chains. Moreover, their wallet profiles can also hold digital arts with a gallery view or switch between custom domain names as their identity as a crypto wallet for assets and identity.
The key innovation is social recovery with on-chain security like Argent, Loopring and Gnosis Safe. We are bringing the best research called SmartOTP (One Time Password) with air-gapped and composable authentication into production. You only need a Google Authenticator; you trust only a set of open-source smart contracts. (more)
Keyless Social Wallets via One-Time-Passwords (OTP Authenticator)
The future is a multi-chain world with many digital identities representing you. Instead of one chain to rule all, Harmony is building bridges — not walls — to connect all assets, users, and daily uses. The ONE wallet mentioned above will be the portal leading to any marketplace you need or any community you belong to or any profile you curate.
Instead of a birth country, you can own a domain name and NFT tokens that define a pseudonym country with decentralized governance and private transactions among citizens. Harmony Name Service (HNS) will map public keys to even an Emoji and Internet domains like Crazy.ONE. Harmony’s bridges will track token meta-attributes such as hosting URLs and image artifacts to support these cross-chain NFTs.
The potential is more than generative arts or virtual experience. Through our partner Animoca and Quidd, we are bringing branded assets such as Beast Quest and Atari to mainstream consumers. With airdrops, editorials, galleries — and soon NFT for group moments and community events — blockchain technology is finally creating value for people while being ambient in our lives. (more)