Harmony February Updates: ETHDenver, BTC Bridge, Project-X, Bored Apes and a New Look

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Harmony

4 min readMar 3, 2022

In February, the Harmony team headlined ETHDenver as a top sponsor, we interacted with thousands of members of the Harmony community, handed out over 20 grants, 300+ scholarships, It also marked the launch of our much-awaited BTC bridge.

Read our February highlights below. Follow us @harmonyprotocol to stay updated.

Launches & Milestones

Bitcoin Bridge: We launched our fully trustless, decentralized, secure and permissionless Bitcoin Bridge. Users can now bridge their BTC to Harmony via the bridge, which enables a 1:1 Bitcoin-backed asset 1BTC. The 1BTC can be used to participate in DeFi protocols on Harmony.

Harmony Website Gets A New Look: At ETHDenver, the Harmony website got a makeover, making it easy for our users to stay updated with our latest announcements and apply for new DAOs and grants.

MADNFT: The MAD NFT platform launched its first airdrop on the Harmony mainnet. The platform will be bringing creators from around the world into the Harmony ecosystem. Some NFTs will also give owners access to the VR gallery and other exclusive access in the Metaverse created by MAD.

Scaleswap: Harmony is now on the Scaleswap launchpad, a platform offering launch and investment opportunities for curated projects and providing their community with fair access to exclusive early-stage IDO opportunities

Gaming DAO: Harmony became a part of a new gaming DAO, called Alpha Gaming. The DAO will invest in GameFi projects, building upon Harmony’s vision of expanding the metaverse.

TGI Anniversary: 2nd February marked the 5th anniversary of Harmony’s TGI, and the team celebrated the event and the Chinese New Year together.

ETH Denver

At Ethereum Denver, the Harmony team hosted multiple side events, consisting of talks, panels, launches, grants, sponsorships, and much more. Here are some highlights of ETHDenver.

Awarded 3 Winners at the ETHDenver Hackathon: The Harmony team awarded 3 teams out of 38 submissions as winners of the Harmony bounties.

Project-X: We created the Project X initiative for ETH Denver. The Harmony team split into groups of three, each group with the ability to invest in upcoming and promising teams and projects attending the ETH Denver conference. Click the link to see the list of our Project X investments and grants. We have quite an exciting lineup!

Participated in Diversity Dinner: Harmony participated in a diversity dinner to encourage more participation on blockchain from all under-represented groups.

Sponsoring Women In Crypto: In partnership with the HER DAO, Harmony sponsored over 300 women developers to help them attend their first Web3 event.

ONE Blue Heart: On Valentine’s day, Harmony spread love towards the women in crypto with the One Blue Heart event. With some amazing speakers, the community indulged in learnings, discussions, and conversations.

Bored Ape Yacht Club: Harmony launched the cross-chain NFT Passport feature at Ethereum Denver. Bored Ape (BAYC) owners can now use their apes as their in-game PFP in DeFi-Kingdoms and get 50 $JEWEL as rewards.

ONE Big Night: Harmony had all of Denver talking about us as we organized a surprise afterparty in Denver, which consisted of surprise reveals, discussions about the decentralized future, and a special performance by Grammy Award nominee, DJ, and record producer Deadmau5.

Culture, Community, and Collaboration: The Harmony Africa DAO brought together an impressive group of builders and entrepreneurs, including Harmony founder Stephen Tse, Kweku Mandela, Princess Sarah Culberson of Sierra Leone, entrepreneur Del Titus Bawuah, and Africa DAO lead govenor Eduard Peris Deprez to discuss culture, community, and collaboration on the African continent. African pop star AG Baby headlined their party with Amplify Africa hosting.

Partnership Highlights

88 Rising: Harmony is partnering with multinational music company and record label 88 Rising. More information surrounding the details of this partnership will be shared in the near future. Stay tuned for more!

Keystone: Harmony partnered with Keystone wallet to augment the cross-chain security for Harmony bridges, and keep our users safe from phishing attacks.

Onomy Protocol: Harmony partners with Onomy to let users seamlessly trade between multiple asset ecosystems while allowing for liquidity provisioning and yield on Harmony.

XP Network: With the partnership with XP Network, Harmony will integrate XP Network’s bridge into its own, extending its cross-chain NFT capabilities and providing seamless inter-chain transfers between other blockchains.

Events And Announcements

ZKU: The new cohort for Zero-Knowledge University is now accepting applications. The course is entirely free and students will receive grants of up to $12,000 for completing the course. The cohort is open to everyone with at least some experience in Web3 development.

Staking Support At Smart Contract Level: Users can now use Metamask to stake one as Harmony now supports staking at the smart contract level. This ensures multiple benefits for both stakers and developers.

Scaleswap: Harmony has awarded a grant of $200,000 to Scaleswap, an IDO launch platform, to bring the best and most innovative projects in the Harmony ecosystem.

Genesis Shards: With a $100,000 program to support Harmony’s ecosystem, Genesis Shards aims to catalyze the development of Harmony Launcher, staking modules, metaverse & NFTs.

About Harmony

Build on Harmony, Bridge to All Chains.

Harmony is an open and fast layer-1 blockchain with EVM compatibility. Our mainnet runs applications with 2-second transaction finality and an average transaction cost of $0.0001.

Harmony is your open platform for assets, collectibles, identity, governance. Our secure bridges offer cross-chain asset transfers with Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance and others.

We 💙 Developers.