What is Hedera
Hedera Hashgraph is an enterprise grade public blockchain network that claims to enable you to achieve news peaks of your digital world. HBAR is an energy-efficient and native cryptocurrency of Hedera that powers the platform's decentralised economy. Instead of a wasteful PoW algorithm, Hedera utilises virtual voting. Instead of sending data, nodes exchange gossip about data and gossip about gossip. This helps solve aBFT, boost speed, and reach 100% consensus.
History of Hedera
Hedera Hashgraph was founded by Leemon Baird, a computer scientist, and Mance Harmon, a technology executive in 2018. Its governing council comprises industry heavyweights such as Google, IBM, Tata Communications, LG Electronics, Deutsche Telekom, among other major corporations.
The Hedera proof of stake (PoS) public network is driven by hashgraph consensus that exhibits asynchronous Byzantine fault tolerance (aBFT), theoretically making it possible for the platform to deliver fast transaction speeds, low bandwidth consumption, and high levels of security. Hedera claims that its Hashgraph can process more than 10,000 transactions per second, compared to 2.8 per second for bitcoin and 15 for ethereum.
Developers utilise HBAR tokens to pay for network services like transferring HBAR, managing fungible and non-fungible tokens, and recording data. HBAR tokens are used to reimburse network nodes for bandwidth, compute, and storage for each transaction sent to the network.
In early 2022, Hedera announced plans to open-source its Hashgraph code to 'capitalise on the growing demand for public DLT.' Hedera Hashgraph has received a total of US$127.8 million in funding over nine rounds. A group of 21 investors funds Hedera Hashgraph. The most recent investors are Boeing HorizonX Ventures and Vestinwolf Alternatives.
How Hedera Works
Hedera uses hashgraph consensus, which it claims is a more secure and faster alternative to blockchain consensus mechanisms. It is a public ledger of transactions - a highly secure and distributed database that anybody can view and write to.
In hashgraph consensus, each node is tasked to store a copy of the ledger, maintaining only the latest record. Public ledgers, which carry the key ideals of decentralisation and distributed consensus, are considered the most reliable method of keeping verifiable information and assets. This ledger is stored in a mainnet, a network comprised of consensus and mirror nodes. Consensus nodes, which are currently permissioned and run by the Hedera Governing Council, will become permissionless in the future, allowing them to be run by anybody.
Consensus nodes agree on the validity and sequence of transactions while storing the network's most recent state. Mirror nodes allow developers to store and access historical data for analytics and explorers flexibly and cost-effectively. Hedera network services are a collection of APIs that enable you to mint tokens, create accounts, call smart contracts, write data to the ledger, and more. Each API call has a fixed transaction charge depending on the amount of processing and storage required. The Hedera SDKs make it simple to use the API in your preferred language, such as JavaScript, Java and Go.
What is Hedera Used for?
Hedera Hashgraph promises to offer the maximum degree of security conceivable, even in the network of malicious actors, by the nodes' use of a method called aBFT (asynchronous Byzantine fault tolerance).
Hedera Hashgraph transactions can be processed in parallel, rather than serially, and it has low latency— transactions are sent out and confirmed within a few seconds (with 100% certainty) by the network.
Hedera outperforms blockchain alternatives by orders of magnitude. You can rely on fair access, timestamps, and transaction sequencing that cannot be tampered with by hostile nodes. It operates on a reliable network regulated by term-limited enterprises, with no authorised forks and the capacity to comply with worldwide data rules.
