Harmony
A layer-1 blockchain, Harmony uses sharding and Effective Proof of Stake to achieve scalability, security, and decentralization. A trustless cross-chain bridge and four shards of the network enable transactions to be processed simultaneously. The network was launched in 2019 and has four shards. The use of effective Proof of Stake leads to decentralization of validators and the use of sharding to share the network’s load between validators and delegators.
Polygon
For the Ethereum blockchain, Polygon is a secondary scaling solution. Rather than using their own blockchain, these solutions integrate with an existing blockchain network. Polygon works on Ethereum, which has become increasingly slow and costly as it becomes more popular.
Platform Polygon uses Ethereum’s blockchain to connect Ethereum-based projects. In addition to increasing the flexibility, scalability, and sovereignty of a blockchain project, the Polygon platform offers the security, interoperability, and structural advantages of the Ethereum blockchain
Comparing Metrics
Lets compare few metrics of Polygon blockchain with Harmony and see how they perform. First we start with comparing transactions executed per hour on both blockchains. Polygon has upper hand with around150K transactions per hour during early May and now hovering around 100K transactions per hour. On the other hand Harmoy was executing 90K transactions during mid May now the blockchain is executing around 30K transactions per hour.
Now lets us look at the heat map of transactions to understand which hour of the days is hot. The first chart shows Polygon’s heatmap and the second chart below shows Harmony’s heatmap
The main differentiator of any L1 when compared to Ethereum is their low transaction fees. With Ethereum being impossible to use with high gas fees, almost all blockchain users are fleeing to low cost alternatives. Lets see how much are average transaction fees on Polygon and Harmony in the following chart
Harmony’s transaction fees can’t be beaten by Polygon! Though Polygon fee is cheap, as in few cents per transactions, Harmony transactions fees are in fraction of cents .