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Hedera launched in 2019, co-founded by Dr. Leemon Baird (who invented the hashgraph algorithm) and Mance Harmon. The network is governed by the Hedera Governing Council, which includes Google, IBM, Boeing, Dell, LG Electronics, Tata Communications, and as of December 2025, energy giant Repsol. The council has 39 members, each serving limited terms. This corporate governance model is intentional: Hedera is betting that enterprises trust a network overseen by recognizable names.

Hedera does not use a blockchain at all. It runs on hashgraph, a DAG-based consensus algorithm that uses a gossip protocol combined with virtual voting. Nodes gossip transaction data to each other, and the algorithm derives consensus mathematically without requiring nodes to actually vote. This gives Hedera asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerance (aBFT), which is the highest security grade for distributed consensus. The network handles over 10,000 TPS with finality in 3 to 5 seconds. Transaction fees are fixed at $0.001 for crypto transfers and $0.0001 for consensus messages. The hashgraph patent is owned by Hedera, which means no one else can run the same algorithm — a point critics raise about centralization.