Hedera (HBAR) is the native cryptocurrency of the Hedera network, a public distributed ledger that records transactions using a technology called hashgraph rather than a conventional blockchain. HBAR pays the network's fees and is staked to secure it. The network is aimed at businesses and developers who want fast, low-cost transactions with predictable fees, for uses such as payments, tokenization and record-keeping.
Hedera is unusual in how it is run. Instead of an open community of miners or validators, it is governed by the Hedera Council, a group of up to 39 large organizations from different industries and regions that serve limited terms. HBAR is the coin; the network and its consensus method are distinct from it. The total supply of 50 billion HBAR was created at launch and no more can be minted.
Hedera in plain terms
Picture an office where news spreads by gossip. Each person tells a random colleague everything they have heard and when they heard it, and that colleague passes it on. Very soon everyone knows not just the news but the order in which it arrived, so they can agree on what happened first without holding a meeting. Hedera's computers keep records this way, which lets them settle transactions in a few seconds.
The office is overseen by a board of well-known companies that take turns running the main computers and voting on the rules. HBAR is the ticket you need to use the office's services. Each service has a fixed price in dollars, so a payment costs about the same amount whatever HBAR happens to be worth that day; only the number of HBAR you hand over changes.
History
Hashgraph was invented by the computer scientist Leemon Baird, who described it in a 2016 paper and co-founded the company Swirlds with Mance Harmon to develop it. Hedera was set up to run a public network using the technology, and its mainnet opened to the public in September 2019. Early council members included companies such as Google, IBM, Boeing and Deutsche Telekom. In September 2024 Hedera contributed its entire codebase to the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust, where it continues as the open-source project Hiero. On 28 October 2025 Canary Capital launched the first US spot HBAR exchange-traded fund, trading on Nasdaq under the ticker HBR.
How it works
Nodes share transactions through "gossip about gossip" and reach agreement through virtual voting, in which each node can calculate how the others would vote without sending extra messages. The result is asynchronous Byzantine fault tolerance, meaning the network can keep agreeing on a correct order even if some nodes fail or act dishonestly. Voting weight is set by staked HBAR, a form of proof of stake; holders can stake to a node and earn rewards without lending out their coins. The network offers three main services: a consensus service for time-stamping data, a token service for issuing coins and NFTs, and a smart contract service compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine.
Fees and supply
Hedera prices each type of transaction in US dollars, not in HBAR, and converts the price using an exchange rate the network updates regularly. The amount of HBAR charged is:
A basic HBAR transfer is priced at $0.0001. If HBAR trades at 0.20 dollars, the fee is HBAR; if the price doubles to 0.40 dollars, the same transfer costs 0.00025 HBAR. This differs from networks where users bid for space and fees jump when demand rises; see gas fee. All 50 billion HBAR were minted at genesis and are released into circulation over time from a treasury controlled by Hedera, which the council uses for ecosystem grants and operations. As a result, the circulating supply has grown steadily since launch, and the timing of treasury releases is watched closely by holders.
Uses
- Network fees. HBAR pays for every transaction, token transfer and smart-contract call.
- Staking. Holders stake HBAR to nodes to help secure the network and earn rewards.
- Enterprise and public-sector projects. Firms use the consensus service to time-stamp supply-chain, carbon-credit and audit records.
- Tokens and stablecoins. Issuers create assets through the token service, and HBAR is traded on major exchanges and through the US ETF.
Criticism and risks
Critics argue that a council of invited corporations and a large central treasury make Hedera closer to a permissioned ledger than an open public blockchain, although Hedera has stated plans to let anyone run a node. Council membership does not mean a member uses the network heavily, and actual adoption has been modest compared with the attention it receives. The patents Swirlds once held on hashgraph were another early concern, eased when the code was opened up. HBAR's price is volatile, and the network faces the same smart-contract and wallet risks as other platforms.