What is Hedera Hashgraph (HBAR)?

The Hedera Hashgraph platform is based on Hashgraph, patented in 2016, Swirlds. The decisions were developed by the Technical Director of the organization Lemon Berd.

The first practical implementation of Hedera Hashgraph took place in 2017 as a general corporate network for the National Association of Credit Unions (CUNA) and the Mountain West (MWCUA) Association of Credit Unions.

The founders of the public platform Hedera Hashgraph were the co -founder of Swirlds Mans Harmon and Lemon Berd.

In 2018, the startup Hedera Hashgraph attracted $ 100 million for development. In 2019, the developers launched a public network of the network.

Investors Hedera Hashgraph

Hedera Hashgraph platform was enlisted by the support of a number of large investors:

• Digital Currency Group (DCG) is a maternal company Grayscale Investment Digital Assets. DCG invested in many well -known representatives of the industry, including Coinbase, Kraken, Coinlist, Zcash, Ripple, Ledger and Decentraland;
• Fenbushi Digital is one of the oldest and most famous Chinese venture company. Until 2018, its general partner was the co -founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin. The company was noted in the rounds of financing The Graph, 1inch Network and Nym Technologies;
• Multicoin Capital – a cryptocurrency investment China is testing company founded in 2017. Multicoin Capital headed one of the first rounds of financing Solana Labs, and also invested money in the FTX exchange. In July 2022, the company announced a venture crypto fund for $ 430 million.

Who controls Hedera Hashgraph?

The platform is managed by the Hedera Governing Council Council, formed in 2019 from several representatives of the Fortune 500 list.

At the end of July 2022, the structure of the structure includes 26 companies and organizations, including Boeing, Swirlds, IBM, Nomura Holdings and Ubisoft. The maximum number of managers is limited to 39 participants. Their powers have been valid for three years with the possibility of extending for two terms.

The Council should guarantee the integrity of the code base and eliminate the risks of the hardforn. He also defines membership policy, establishes the network rules, controls the treasury of the platform and approves technical changes.

Since Hashgraph technology is patented, the unauthorized use of the Hedera code entails judicial persecution. According to the project team, this approach means that the network cannot be copied and launched by other participants.

This is significantly distinguished by a project from bitcoin – anyone can use the blockchain code of the first cryptocurrency and change it at their discretion.

How Hedera Hashgraph works?

Distributed Hedera Hashgraph uses a data structure excellent from blockchain – a directed acyclic graph (DAG). Blocks with transactions and other information in DAG do not follow strict linear sequence as, for example, in the Bitcoin network, but are recorded in the register regardless of the order.

In the blockchain, miners compete for the processing of the same transactions and tasks, in a sense, spending energy in vain. On the contrary, the architecture of DAG allows you to perform many parallel calculations that independently from each other – this is what increases the speed of operations and energy efficiency of the network.

Hedera Hashgraph also uses other key mechanisms.

Asynchronous Byzantine resistance algorithm for errors (ABFT)

ABT – Implementation of the BYZANTINE FAULT TOLENCE (BFT) consensus algorithm used in blockchains like COSMOS and SOLANA. It allows you to protect the network from malicious actions from 1/3 of all nodes.

Gossip protocol

Hedera Gossip is used to exchange messages (transaction, time, signature) between nodes. Noda transfers a message to the neighboring people who send it to other neighboring nodes – this continues until all the participants in the network will reach the sent information.

This allows you to maintain the throughput when transmitting data. The same mechanism of “communication” is used by Theta Network and Iota projects.

Proof-OF-STAKE algorithm

In Hedera Hashgraph, stakeing is different from the mechanism presented in Ethereum 2.0 and other blockchains based on POS, where each node votes behind the block.

Instead, nodes in Hedera based on mathematical calculations themselves determine which block will vote for the next node. Such a system is called “virtual voting”. Even if the malicious node works against the rules, the calculation of honest participants in the network does not allow us to make a “wrong” decision.

How Hedera Hashgraph is used?

The developers position the project as a platform for business, so the network has a number of characteristic features. For example, unlike Ethereum and BNB Chain, an ordinary user cannot start a smart contract or a decentralized application.

To obtain a full access to Hedera services, you need to create a personal account and undergo a check. After the verification, the following possibilities will open:

• release and management of tokens, including NFT;
• creation and launch of smart contracts in Solidity and Vyper programming languages;
• Operations with the file service – storage, verification, viewing, management of accounting data and other information on the network.

This approach helps to protect the platform from scammers and ensure compliance with the requirements of individual participants in specific jurisdictions.

Through intermediaries like exchanges and authorized wallets Hedera Hashgraph allows you to create “ordinary” accounts without verification. The current list can be found on the project website.

Features of Hedera Hashgraph

The source code of Hedera is closed and protected by the patent of Swirlds. Hedera Governing Council participants are responsible for the management and development of the platform.

According to the developers, Hedera Hashgraph is a corporate level platform with limited users access to the network and development capabilities based on it. This is one of the few crypto industry projects, which are initially focused on compliance with regulatory requirements.

Despite the restrictions, Hedera Hashgraph has a number of competitive advantages highlighted by the project team: