What is Hedera?
Hedera (HBAR) is a public distributed ledger built around the Hashgraph consensus algorithm, a non-blockchain data structure co-invented by Dr. Leemon Baird. The network launched its mainnet in 2019 and is governed by a council of up to 39 major corporations - including Google, IBM, Boeing and major banks - who take turns running nodes.
Hedera's pitch is enterprise-grade throughput with predictable, very low fees. Hashgraph is mathematically proven Byzantine Fault Tolerant, and the network offers native services for consensus, tokens, smart contracts (EVM-compatible) and file storage.
How does Hedera work?
Hashgraph consensus uses gossip-about-gossip: each node shares what it has heard with random peers, and virtual voting determines consistent transaction ordering without explicit rounds of voting. This gives sub-second finality and the ability to handle tens of thousands of transactions per second.
Today only governing council members run consensus nodes; community members run mirror nodes that replicate state. This hybrid model trades some permissionless decentralization for enterprise-grade SLAs and regulatory clarity that Hedera believes is required for large institutional adoption.