Harmony (ONE)
Described as a blockchain that runs Ethereum applications with 2-second transaction finality and 1000 times lower fees, Harmony is effectively an open platform for assets, collectibles, identity, and governance. It offers secure bridges that provide cross-chain asset transfers with Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain and other chains. Harmony has bridges that can connect any Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake chains. Harmony has also managed to attract notable ecosystem partners.
A platform that is designed to make possible the building of decentralized applications (DApps), Harmony is a network that allows the creation of blocks within a matter of a few seconds by implementing random state sharding. Founded by a former principal engineer for Apple, Stephen Tse, the project was first conceived around 2017 with the aim of focusing on achieving better processing speeds and reducing node validation times.
Verifiable Random Function (VRF) was introduced to protect nodes, secure the validation process, and achieve unbiased and unpredictable shard membership which essentially involves assigning and re-assigning nodes and validators in a randomized manner.
Harmony utilizes effective proof-of-stake (EPoS) in their sharding concept which is a consensus method that allows hundreds of validators to stake simultaneously. EPoS is designed to be better than PoW in terms of providing faster processing times and better scalability, promising an increase in network participation and improved ecosystem sustainability.
Harmony is also focused on providing staking incentives to attract more node operators through its Open Staking initiative which is meant to promote interaction within the network and incentivize stakeholders with ONE tokens which is the native token of the Harmony ecosystem. ONE tokens can be traded on exchanges such as Binance, Huobi, KuCoin, Bybit, among others.
Euphoria (WAGMI)
A fork of Wonderland on Harmony, Euphoria was created by a lead dev with the moniker 0xViper – the same developer behind ViperSwap and the VenomDAO ecosystem. Said to be inspired by Olympus DAO and Wonderland, Euphoria is dubbed a new DeFi 2.0 primitive on Harmony. It is essentially an algorithmic reserve currency protocol.
Within the ecosystem, market participants can employ two main strategies: staking and bonding. WAGMI tokens can be staked to earn more and bonders can provide LP, DAI or UST tokens and in exchange receive discounted WAGMI tokens which are released over a 5 day vesting period. Each WAGMI token is backed by a basket of assets in the Euphoria treasury. According to Euphoria, there’s currently over 70,669 tokens staked with a treasury balance of around $31,904,240 and an unbelievable APY currently sitting at a whopping 721,096%.
Those who stake benefit mostly from supply growth since the majority of WAGMI tokens minted by the protocol from the treasury are distributed to the stakers who benefit from auto-compounding balances. Bonders benefit from price consistency or an increase in price of the WAGMI token.
WAGMI tokens can be purchased on exchanges such as Hotbit and ViperSwap.
DeFi Kingdoms (JEWEL)
At its core, DeFi Kingdoms is a DeFi game that is built on the Harmony blockchain network and designed with usable NFTs. It combines decentralized finance with Play-to-Earn economics. The ecosystem is being built to include features e.g. the JEWEL token, the DEX – which utilises UniswapV2 Protocol, the Gardens, and their NFT assets (Heroes, Equipment, and Kingdoms).
The Kingdoms marketplace allows users to swap tokens at current exchange rates. Users can also opt to become liquidity providers by adding liquidity to any token pools of their choosing. These pools earn liquidity providers fees each time the tokens are traded. The liquidity provider (LP) tokens can also be staked in the Gardens allowing stakers to earn JEWEL token rewards.
Players can use JEWEL tokens to purchase items and unique NFTs such as Heroes and Kingdoms within the DeFi Kingdom the game, as well as other in-game items. JEWEL is also a governance token giving holders power to participate in the development of the DeFi Kingdoms ecosystem.
DeFi Kingdoms also offers a Bank where users are able to deposit their JEWEL tokens and receive xJEWEL shares. How it works is that the Bank receives fees from the DEX and periodically executes market buys in order to acquire more JEWEL tokens, consequently making xJEWEL shares worth more that the JEWEL tokens initially deposited. xJEWEL holders are further rewarded each time there’s an in-game transaction of JEWEL tokens since a percentage of the fees is always deposited into the Bank, increasing the treasury amount which is ultimately distributed to token holders.
