Harmony — Day ONE Mainnet
Today is day ONE for Harmony’s Mainnet. Whenever you do something for the first time, it’s both exciting and intimidating. That’s how we feel in this moment. On this day, we take a bold step towards implementing the world’s first fully sharded, proof of stake blockchain.
We are intimidated because there are always unforeseen risks when you try something new. On the other hand, we are tremendously excited because we believe this new architecture — a linearly scalable and secure blockchain — could unlock enormous potential for this industry and the world.
It is important to note that we could not have done this alone. We count ourselves lucky to be part of a much larger community of projects pushing for the same goal and we are thankful to have such talented peers to learn with and grow alongside of. We would also like to thank our community and collaborators who have relentlessly pushed us towards this launch.
Bringing scalability to life is no trivial job — at times it is humbling — and we acknowledge that there is still much left to be done. But today we celebrate this small achievement because our Day ONE Mainnet brings us closer to our vision “to scale trust for billions and create a radically fair economy.”
So what is Day ONE Mainnet?
Day ONE mainnet is the beginning of many things. First and foremost it is the beginning of a stable and decentralized network. Out of the 600 nodes in the network split between 4 shards, more than 150 are external validators — our foundational nodes. This puts Harmony in the top 15 most decentralized networks from day ONE.
Second, this mainnet is the beginning of block rewards for our network participants. Everyday, roughly 1 million ONE tokens will be minted and distributed among the 600 initial nodes. This incentive structure is designed to radically reward those who are helping to bootstrap the Harmony network.
Last but not least, with the launch of Day ONE mainnet we will mint our genesis block. Inside the genesis block will be inscribed our motto, “Harmony for One and All. Open Consensus for 10B.” Forever this message will persist within the Harmony chain, setting the direction for what is to come.
Technical Innovations
Along with these milestones, we’re also proud of several protocol level innovations that we have built into our Day ONE mainnet. These technical achievements are “firsts” in their own right and are what make Harmony unique and superior to other scaling approaches.
Fast-BFT consensus
Harmony’s Fast-BFT combines the battle-tested PBFT algorithm with cutting edge BLS multisignatures to deliver a scalable and secure consensus algorithm. This transforms the slow but very secure PBFT consensus, making it orders of magnitude faster. Best of all, FBFT guarantees finality within just one block confirmation.
View-Change protocol
In a blockchain network, nodes may drop out or become corrupted. Therefore we need to guard against an absent or adversarial leader. Our view-change protocol is a robust process that allows us to replace such a malicious leader with an honest one. Harmony is the first proof of stake blockchain to implement a functional PBFT view change.
State synchronization
A key feature for blockchain is to allow anyone to join the network quickly and easily. Our state synchronization greatly reduces the time required for new nodes to join the network and synchronize to the current state of the chain. This is also helpful in resharding nodes within the network.
For You — Setting the foundation for open participation
Our mainnet will only be as strong as the community supporting it. We need your help to grow from 600 nodes to 2400!
For Day ONE mainnet, only our 150 foundational node operators will be validators earning full block rewards. If you are interested in helping with the next phase of our open network, please sign up on https://harmony.one/sodl (SODL — Stake On for Dear Life) for updates.
In the meantime, take a look at our code and join our discord server to stay up to date with our development as we gear up for the next launch.
Looking forward
During times like these, we recall how humbly this journey started with just 7 of us in a garage in Cupertino. Since that day, our team has made extraordinary sacrifices to bring us to this historic moment. Working 997 (9 am to 9 pm 7 days a week), missing family members’ birthdays, and doing overnight shifts to guarantee network stability. Yet with each passing day, rather than growing tired, we become more motivated and dedicated to our vision for Harmony.
Thank you again to all of our supporters, critics, family and friends, buidlers, hodlers and anyone aspiring for a decentralized future. This is only Day ONE.
