Rewards are not fixed for staking participants. They are subject to change based on the performance of the validator, and the total number of staked tokens on the network. For estimation we can consult the following indicative figures:

• A constant annual reward of 441M ONE regardless of changes in underlying variables such as block time and total staked %
• Transaction fees offset issuance creating a path to 0 issuance as protocol gains adoption

Under current conditions with around 56% of all tokens being staked, this results in an average return of 11.18% for validators and 10.15% for delegators.

For more in-depth information, you can play with the Harmony Staking Calculator or take a look at this spreadsheet model.

In Harmony Staking – Validators receive more rewards if they control less stake. By delegating with smaller validators you can increase your reward rate. You can check the individual return rates for validators here. Furthermore each provider charges his own fees for the service(running servers, maintenance, maintaining high uptime) and the rewards are just as high as the performance / uptime of the validator node.

You can undelegate at any time. Your undelegated tokens will be returned back to you by the end of the epoch. By then you can simply initiate a new delegation your preferred staking validator.

To run your own validator staking node for Harmony you need to own at least 10,000 ONE. We believe most validators on Harmony will use a cloud setup as it has the lowest barriers to entry and is faster than provisioning one’s own hardware. Using AWS as an example given it’s the most pervasive cloud provider, between compute, storage and network costs, the average monthly expense will be $50 to run a node per our calculations using AWS’ t3.small instances and Harmony’s own estimates on network usage. Learn more how to set up your own validator here.

There are certain risks associated with Staking on Harmony. Your delegated tokens are also associated with slashing risks of the validator. As a delegator, you should carefully choose validators based on their historical performance metrics such as APR, uptime and commission. In case of indifference or indecisiveness, you should distribute your delegations among multiple validators in order to minimize risk. Furthermore please consider potential risks such as:

• Account lost: Mnemonic / Private key backup
• Firmware Problems
• Network Centralization 
• Price Volatility of $ONE Coins
• Technical Dept

Harmony is a fast and secure blockchain. Our mission is to scale trust for billions of people and create a radically fair economy.

The team is of infrastructure engineers in Silicon Valley, including 4 PhD, 7 ex-Google/Amazon/Apple/Facebook, 2 Harvard MBA, and Stanford/Berkeley AI graduates.

Since 2017 many of Harmony’s founding team members would gather every week for hours in the tradition of Google TGIF to share world-changing ideas over drinks. We were all passionate about machine learning, then quickly blockchain, as they were technologies that could impact billions of people.

During these weekly gatherings, we discussed the huge potential of blockchain to create an open data economy, but that the ecosystem was held back by an inability to scale. With our depth of expertise from the big 5 tech firms, we felt compelled to build a blockchain that could support mass adoption and unlock the full promise of decentralization. That was Harmony.

We debated how to find product-market fit and build sustainable platforms on blockchain. We researched many technical approaches for scaling and security of smart contracts. We toured in Asia to understand the crypto communities and the entrepreneurial spirit.

The Foundational Node Round during May 2019, along with a private seed sale in May 2018 takes our total funding to over $20m, following some record-breaking crowdfunding exchange offering on Binance LaunchPad in June 2019.

The Team raised $18.3M private round, $5.5M node round (Binance Labs, HashKey Capital), and $5M public with Binance IEO Launchpad.

The team behind Harmony are serial entrepreneurs and elite engineers from the top tech companies in Silicon Valley such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook. Before founding Harmony, CEO Stephen Tse’s previous startup was acquired by Apple. Harmony’s team combines deep technical knowledge of blockchain with experience of building and scaling technology companies.