Non-block ledger

Hedera ticker HBAR

No public-data lookups yet
5 reviewed developments
40 cited sources

Summary

Hedera runs the hashgraph consensus algorithm. Each node gossips events (signed bundles of transactions that also record which node it last synced with), so every node builds the same graph of who told whom and when. From that shared history each node works out how the others would vote (virtual voting) without sending vote messages, then assigns every transaction a consensus timestamp and a single total order. A node's vote is weighted by the HBAR staked to it, and decisions need more than two-thirds of staked weight. Any account can stake to a node without lock-up or slashing, but only Hedera Council members operate consensus nodes; transitional nodes jointly managed by Hashgraph and council members are being phased out as of 20 May 2026. 1 2 3 4 8 9 10

Design

System: Non-block ledgerHedera orders transactions with the hashgraph algorithm: nodes gossip signed events that form a directed acyclic graph, and virtual voting gives each transaction a consensus timestamp. Consensus never produces competing blocks. Numbered record files (HIP-415) and newer block streams (HIP-1056) package already-ordered transactions for tooling and archives. Consensus nodes are limited to Hedera Council members, so a reviewer could call it a permissioned ledger; the package class is kept because anyone can hold an account and submit transactions.
Settlement family: Its own design
Scarce resource: Stake (proof of stake)
State model: Accounts
Finality: Other
Who makes blocks: There is no leader or block proposer: every consensus node creates and gossips events. The node set is permissioned. The council's pages say members host the network's nodes and approve software updates; its agreement allows up to 39 term-limited members. The council's About page says it has grown to 34 organizations, while Hedera's home page showed 31 council members on 27 September 2026, so the current count was not reconciled.
Fork choice: None in the chain-selection sense. Order is fixed by virtual voting on famous witnesses, and a transaction with a consensus timestamp is final as long as less than one-third of staked weight is faulty. The 2016 paper proves Byzantine agreement under full asynchrony that is reached with probability one, not within a fixed time bound. There is no longest or heaviest chain to switch to.

Qualifications

System class · Contested. Filed with non-block ledgers because hashgraph consensus orders gossiped events without producing competing blocks. Consensus nodes are admitted by the Hedera Council, not by stake alone, so a reviewer who weighs node admission first could file Hedera as a permissioned ledger instead; anyone can still hold an account and submit transactions.
Block metrics · Not applicable. Consensus does not produce blocks, so block time, block size, block fullness and orphaned-block rates have no consensus meaning. Record files (and newer block-stream blocks) group already-ordered transactions into short time windows for tools such as the JSON-RPC relay and archives.
Fork choice · Not applicable. Virtual voting fixes one total order. There is no chain-selection rule and no reorganization of transactions that already have a consensus timestamp.
Mempool · Not applicable. Hedera's documentation glossary says networks using its asynchronous Byzantine fault tolerant consensus have no memory pool of transactions; in the hashgraph design, submitted transactions travel inside the events that nodes gossip.
Finality · Applies. Finality is deterministic once a consensus timestamp is assigned, assuming more than two-thirds of staked weight is honest. Nothing is slashed if that fails, so it is not economic finality in the proof-of-stake sense. Hedera's home page showed about 2.9 seconds to finality on 2026-09-27 with no method stated, and its EVM overview page gives 3 to 5 seconds; both are the project's own figures.
Scarce resource · Partial. Stake weights each node's vote, but staking does not let anyone join consensus: node operators are admitted through council governance. Staking has no lock-up, bonding or slashing.
Decentralization · Contested. Consensus nodes are run by Hedera Council members (up to 39 organizations with term limits and one vote each). Transitional nodes jointly managed by Hashgraph and council members are being phased out as of 20 May 2026, per the council FAQ. Hedera calls this decentralized governance; critics point out that node admission is permissioned. Not scored here.
Evm compatibility · Partial. Contracts run on a Besu-based EVM reached through a JSON-RPC relay, but HBAR has 8 decimals natively and 18 in the relay's value field, accounts have native 0.0.x IDs, and blocks are record-file time windows. Tools that assume standard EVM JSON-RPC behaviour can misread amounts or blocks.
Settlement family · Partial. Recorded as other: Hedera settles on its own network, where consensus nodes order transactions with the hashgraph algorithm (Hedera's term) and give each a consensus timestamp that makes it final; nothing settles to another chain. None of the named settlement families describes this.

Tradeoffs

This view follows one way of thinking about design priorities, often called the blockchain trilemma. The design-priorities lesson sets out the counter-view. Read the design-priorities lesson.

Emphasizes

Security and Scalability Contested

Gives up

Open participation in consensus. Only council-approved organizations run consensus nodes, on data-center server hardware, so users depend on a governed, permissioned node set and on its decisions about software upgrades and fee schedules. Ordinary users read history through mirror nodes, which they must trust or run themselves.Security here means Byzantine fault tolerance with fast, deterministic finality. It holds only while more than two-thirds of staked weight is honest, and no slashing backs it. The Hedera Council's site presents governance by many independent organizations as a decentralized governance model; whether a council-admitted node set counts as decentralization is contested and is not scored here.

Full node at home

Data-center class 5 6 7Consensus nodes are council-only, and the operator guide lists 24 cores / 48 threads, at least 256 GB ECC RAM, at least 5 TB of NVMe storage and sustained bandwidth of 1 Gbps or more. Anyone may run a mirror node, which archives and serves history but does not take part in consensus. Hedera's cloud estimate for a minimal mirror node is about USD 515 a month, and full mainnet history needs a database of about 50 TB. Mirror operators also pay to read record data from requester-pays cloud buckets.

Throughput claims

Theoretical peak: 10,000 tx/s 5 10 11Theoretical peak; not comparable across chains or with observed load.Configured mainnet throttle for transfer transactions and the home-page figure, both as displayed on 2026-09-27.Council-operated consensus nodes meeting the published operator specification (24 cores, at least 256 GB RAM, NVMe storage).The documentation figure is a configured admission ceiling for transfer transactions, not a measured rate. Other operations are throttled far lower, for example 125 per second for fungible token mints and 15 million gas per second for smart contracts. The home page states the figure as 10,000+ with no method, window or load description, so it is not comparable. Neither figure covers mirror-node ingestion, state growth or historical storage, which fall on separately run archive infrastructure. Not comparable with observed rates on other networks.

Headline figures are not comparable across chains. A theoretical peak is never a like-for-like number.

Scaling layers

No scaling layer recorded in this profile.

Capabilities

Capabilities of Hedera: how each one is provided, or its research status
Capability	How it is provided	Notes and sources
Account abstraction	Structured assessment pending	Not yet assessed for any chain.
Atomic swaps	Built into the protocolLimited scope	Limited to swaps on Hedera itself. Hedera's docs call this an atomic swap: one built-in transfer transaction moves HBAR and native tokens between accounts, every debited account must sign, and the transfer is atomic, so two parties exchange assets in one transaction without an intermediary. Atomic batch transactions extend all-or-nothing execution to up to 50 inner transactions. No hash-locked or time-locked swap mechanism was found in the reviewed docs, and cross-chain swaps were not reviewed. 12 13 14
Authenticated data publication	Built into the protocolLimited scope	The Hedera Consensus Service is built in: each message is submitted in a transaction that consensus orders, which gives it a consensus timestamp and a sequence number and updates its topic's running hash. Anyone can retrieve or subscribe to a topic's messages through a mirror node and check them against that running hash, and sequence numbers make updates discoverable. Limits: messages are capped at 1 KB (larger ones are split into chunks), a submit key can restrict who publishes, and Hedera's own blog calls it an event log, not a database. 20 21 22
Light clients	Not present	No light-verification path is live on mainnet. Users read history from mirror nodes, which check node signatures on the record files they ingest; a user either trusts a mirror node or runs one, which is archive infrastructure rather than a light client. State proofs and aggregated network signatures, which would let a client check data on its own, are specified in HIP-1056 and listed as in progress on Hedera's roadmap, and the transactions page calls state proofs coming soon. 6 12 23 24
Native staking or delegation	Structured assessment pending	Not yet assessed for any chain.
On-chain governance	Structured assessment pending	Not yet assessed for any chain.
Parallel execution	Structured assessment pending	Not yet assessed for any chain.
Payment or state channels	Unknown	No payment or state channel layer on Hedera was found in reviewed sources.
Programmable spending	Native (protocol or core-team software) Earlier definition	Accounts can be controlled by key lists, nested threshold keys or contract keys. Scheduled transactions collect signatures on the ledger for up to 62 days, and Solidity contracts run on a Besu-based EVM. Hooks (HIP-1195), which let an account attach contract logic that transfers referencing the hook must satisfy, are documented but listed as in progress on Hedera's roadmap, and the release notes show them disabled by default through v0.75, so they are not counted here. 15 16 17 18 24
Protocol-verified messaging	Structured assessment pending	Not yet assessed for any chain.
Reversible transfers or recovery	Built into the protocolLimited scope	Part (a) through built-in scheduled transactions: a sender can schedule a transfer to execute at its expiration time, up to 62 days ahead, instead of when its signatures are complete, and a schedule created with an admin key can be deleted before it executes, cancelling the payment. No way to reclaim a completed HBAR payment was found. Part (b) is not met by the protocol: threshold keys can include a recovery signer, a plain multisig threshold. Issuer wipe keys remove holders' tokens, plus freeze, KYC and pause keys restrict transfers: issuer controls over one token, not HBAR. 15 16 19
Rollups	Unknown	No rollup that settles to Hedera was found in reviewed sources; absence was not exhaustively verified.
Shielded transfers	Structured assessment pending	Not yet assessed for any chain.
Signed partial offers	Unknown	Not yet assessed under this row's current definition.

Reading these values

How this feature is provided: Built into the protocol, core-team software or independent software says where a feature lives and who can change it. These are implementation layers, not quality: core-team software is not closer to the protocol than independent software.
Structured assessment pending: The shared review has not assessed this feature for any chain yet (Account abstraction, Native staking or delegation, On-chain governance, Parallel execution, Protocol-verified messaging and Shielded transfers). That does not mean it is absent, and a chain’s profile may already describe it.
Unknown: The review has not established this for this chain under the current definition; the note beside it says why. Unknown is not absent and not a low score. A feature reads “Not present” only when a source shows it is absent.
Earlier definition: Payment or state channels, Programmable spending and Rollups keep the earlier definition until the next fact-check. There, “Native” does not separate the protocol from core-team software, “Ecosystem software” does not say who publishes it, and “Partial” does not say which layer.
Reading across rows: The list of capabilities is incomplete. Do not read these rows as a chain leading or lagging overall.

Definitions, schema version and review history

Ecosystem & custody

Ecosystem products for Hedera
Product type	Status	Notes and sources
Automated market makers	Established in the ecosystemSaucerSwap	SaucerSwap documents a constant-product pool version (V1), concentrated-liquidity pools (V2) and a V3 order book, built on Hedera smart contracts and native tokens, and describes itself as the largest Hedera exchange by volume. Liquidity depth was not measured and other venues were not reviewed. 25 26 As of Sep 27, 2026.
Issuer-native stablecoins	Established in the ecosystemUSDC (Circle)	Circle lists natively issued USDC on Hedera as token 0.0.456858. Tether's own list of issuance networks does not include Hedera. Hedera's documentation calls USDT0 the omnichain deployment of Tether's USDT and also a third-party token that Hedera does not custody. Each USDT0 token on Hedera is minted through LayerZero against USDT locked in a contract on Ethereum, so it is recorded here as a bridged representation rather than direct issuance on Hedera. Circle's cross-chain transfer protocol does not list Hedera. 27 28 29 30 31 32 As of Sep 27, 2026.
Algorithmic stablecoins	Unknown	Algorithmic or hybrid stablecoins on Hedera were not reviewed. As of Sep 27, 2026.
Bridges	Established in the ecosystemChainlink CCIP, LayerZero (used by USDT0), Hashport (shut down 31 May 2026)	Chainlink's CCIP directory lists Hedera mainnet with HBAR as the gas token. USDT0's deployment table gives Hedera a LayerZero endpoint. Hedera's ecosystem page also lists Axelar, Stargate and others, which were not reviewed one by one. Hashport, a Hedera bridge governed by a group of validators, was permanently shut down on 31 May 2026. Risk: Each bridge relies on its own verifiers (Chainlink's oracle network, LayerZero verifier sets, multisig owners) rather than on Hedera consensus. Hashport's shutdown left its wrapped assets permanently unredeemable, which shows a bridged asset lasts only as long as its operator. 30 31 33 34 35 As of Sep 27, 2026.
Block explorers	First-partyHashScan	HashScan serves the open-source Hedera Mirror Node Explorer (copyright Hedera Hashgraph, LLC; the code is now kept under Hiero). It displays what its mirror node indexed, which is provider data rather than independent verification. Other explorers were not reviewed. 36 37 As of Sep 27, 2026.
Hardware wallets	Established in the ecosystemLedger	See custody rows: Ledger documents HBAR in its own app and pairing with the HashPack wallet; Trezor's Hedera page says Trezor does not currently support Hedera. 38 39 As of Sep 27, 2026.

Hardware-wallet custody

Hardware-wallet custody for Hedera
Device maker	Status	What users can and cannot do
Ledger	Native supportSame as native: Yes	Can: Manage HBAR, check balances and view transaction history in Ledger's own desktop and mobile app Can: Connect a Ledger device to the HashPack software walletLedger's page does not describe staking or Hedera Token Service tokens inside its own app; those were not verified. 38 40 As of Sep 27, 2026.
Trezor	None foundSame as native: No	Cannot: Manage Hedera accounts in Trezor SuiteTrezor's Hedera page says Trezor does not currently support Hedera and names no third-party wallet to use instead. 39 As of Sep 27, 2026.

Public data

iKnow Blockchain has no public-data lookups for Hedera yet. This is a limit of the service, not a statement about the network.

Public-data lookups for Hedera
Lookup	Status	What it covers and its limits
Address or account	Not available yet	Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet.
Tokens and assets	Not available yet	Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet.
NFTs	Not available yet	Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet.
Transactions	Not available yet	Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet.

A lookup covers one address or transaction from one provider. It is never a complete wallet, and an error or private value is reported as unknown, not zero. About public data · Connect your AI

Sourced developments

Developments: Review overdue Reviewed Sep 27, 2026; next review was due Oct 7, 2026, 12:00 UTC.

Publication date · newest first

Published Sep 24, 2026ResearchVerified against sources

Hedera contributed the CLPR cross-ledger protocol to LF Decentralized Trust Labs

Hedera announced that CLPR, a cross-ledger protocol developed by Hashgraph that aims to let ledgers verify each other's state through state proofs instead of bridges, was contributed to Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust as a lab project.
- Implementation:codebase contributed as an early-stage lab
- Release:no production release
- Activation:not a network change
Date basis: Hedera blog post date: September 24, 2026.

Source: Hedera blog — Hedera Contributes Hashgraph-Developed CLPR to Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust Labs (external site)
Published Sep 22, 2026ProtocolVerified against sources

Atomic batch transactions are phasing out smart contract calls

Hedera announced a two-stage change. From September 2026 a batch may include at most one smart contract call, and it must be the last inner transaction. A later mainnet change, estimated for March 2027, is to remove contract calls from batches entirely. Native token, topic and account operations in batches are unaffected.
- Implementation:first-stage limit announced as in effect in September 2026
- Release:second stage estimated for March 2027
- Activation:full removal not yet active
Date basis: Hedera blog post date: September 22, 2026. The March 2027 removal is an estimate, not an observed activation.

Sources: Hedera blog — Atomic Batch Transactions No Longer Support Smart Contract Calls (external site) · Hedera documentation — Transactions and queries (external site)
Published Jul 22, 2026ProtocolVerified against sources

Consensus node release v0.75 reached Hedera mainnet

Hedera's release notes record v0.75 on mainnet on 22 July 2026, after testnet on 25 June 2026. The notes list work on moving node output to block streams, including block-stream cutover logic and wrapped record blocks, alongside record-file alignment changes.
- Proposal:HIP-1056 block streams approved
- Implementation:cutover logic included in v0.75
- Release:released; testnet 2026-06-25, mainnet 2026-07-22
- Activation:effect on downstream stream consumers not confirmed
Date basis: Mainnet update date shown in the consensus node release notes: July 22, 2026.

Sources: Hedera documentation — Consensus node release notes (external site) · Hiero improvement proposals — HIP-1056: Block streams (external site)
Published May 31, 2026Ecosystem projectVerified against sources

Hashport bridge permanently shut down

Hashport, a bridge between Hedera and other networks run by a group of validators, states that it was permanently decommissioned on 31 May 2026 at 12:00 UTC. Its notice says all bridging infrastructure is offline and wrapped assets are permanently unredeemable.
- Implementation:service decommissioned
- Release:not applicable to a shutdown
- Activation:offline since 2026-05-31
Date basis: Decommission date stated in the notice on the hashport site: May 31, 2026, 12:00 UTC.

Source: hashport — hashport (external site)
Published May 20, 2026ProtocolVerified against sources

Release v0.73 turned on the simple fee model and high-volume entity creation on Hedera mainnet

Hedera's release notes record v0.73 on mainnet on 20 May 2026, after testnet on 29 April 2026, and say the release enables HIP-1261 simple fees and HIP-1313 high-volume entity creation on mainnet. Simple fees price each transaction as a base fee plus extras, split into node, network and service parts. The high-volume option lets entity-creation transactions go above the standard throttle in exchange for a congestion multiplier of up to four times.
- Proposal:HIP-1261 simple fees Final
- Implementation:included in release v0.73
- Release:released; testnet 2026-04-29, mainnet 2026-05-20
- Activation:enabled on mainnet according to the release notes
Date basis: Mainnet update date shown in the consensus node release notes: May 20, 2026.

Sources: Hedera documentation — Consensus node release notes (external site) · Hiero improvement proposals — HIP-1261: Simple fees (external site) · Hedera documentation — Fee model (external site)

Topics your AI can explain

Your AI can explain these topics for Hedera through the connection, with sources.

What Hedera is: a hashgraph ledger with HBAR as its native asset
How hashgraph consensus works and what it assumes
Accounts, keys and native tokens: how Hedera holds state
HBAR units and dollar-set fees
Finality, ordering and why Hedera has no reorganizations
The Hedera Consensus Service: an ordered log, not a database
Who runs Hedera: the council, consensus nodes and mirror nodes
Stablecoins and bridges on Hedera

Known gaps

What this profile's review did not establish:

No observed throughput window with a published method was found; only a configured throttle and a home-page figure are recorded, both treated as peaks.
Hooks (HIP-1195) are listed as in progress on the roadmap and disabled by default in release notes through v0.75; a mainnet activation date was not found.
What the July 2026 block-stream cutover (release v0.75) changed on mainnet, and when state proofs will ship, were not confirmed; the v0.76 and v0.77 release notes list aggregated network signatures as disabled.
The number of active consensus nodes and the current per-node maximum stake were not verified, and the council's own pages and Hedera's home page give different member counts (34 and 31).
Whether stake above a node's maximum still counts toward that node's consensus weight was not confirmed; the docs only say it does not raise rewards.
No payment channel, state channel or rollup anchored to Hedera was reviewed.
Algorithmic stablecoins on Hedera were not reviewed.
Bridges on Hedera's ecosystem page other than Chainlink CCIP, LayerZero (through USDT0) and the closed Hashport were not reviewed one by one.
Explorers other than HashScan were not reviewed.
Staking and native-token support inside Ledger's own app were not verified; Trezor's Hedera page names no third-party signing path, and none was searched for beyond it.
Cross-chain hash-locked swap tooling for Hedera was not reviewed.

Sources

Oldest dated source check: Source checked Sep 27, 2026 Next check due Oct 27, 2026.

All 40 sources were checked in the last 30 days.

The Swirlds Hashgraph Consensus Algorithm: Fair, Fast, Byzantine Fault Tolerance (SWIRLDS-TR-2016-01) (external site)Leemon Baird, Swirlds · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Hashgraph consensus algorithm (external site)Hedera documentation · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Virtual voting (external site)Hedera documentation · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Staking (external site)Hedera documentation · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Consensus node requirements (external site)Hedera documentation · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Mirror nodes (external site)Hedera documentation · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Run your own mirror node (external site)Hedera documentation · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
About Hedera Council (external site)Hedera Council · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Hedera Council FAQ (external site)Hedera Council · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Hedera home page (external site)Hedera · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Mainnet (throttles) (external site)Hedera documentation · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Transactions and queries (external site)Hedera documentation · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Transfer tokens (external site)Hedera documentation · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Atomic swaps (external site)Hedera documentation · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Keys and signatures (external site)Hedera documentation · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Scheduled transactions (external site)Hedera documentation · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Hiero hooks (external site)Hedera documentation · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
EVM on Hedera explained (external site)Hedera documentation · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Hedera Token Service overview (external site)Hedera documentation · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Create a topic (external site)Hedera documentation · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Submit a message (external site)Hedera documentation · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
How to unlock the full potential of HCS (and why it is not a database) (external site)Hedera blog · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
HIP-1056: Block Streams (external site)Hiero improvement proposals · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Hedera roadmap (external site)Hedera · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
SaucerSwap documentation (external site)SaucerSwap Labs · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
SaucerSwap (external site)SaucerSwap Labs · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
USDC contract addresses (external site)Circle · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
CCTP supported chains and domains (external site)Circle · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Supported protocols (external site)Tether · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
USDT0 deployments (external site)USDT0 · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
USDT0 documentation (external site)USDT0 · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
USDT0 omnichain stablecoin on Hedera (external site)Hedera documentation · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
CCIP Directory: Hedera mainnet (external site)Chainlink · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Hedera ecosystem (external site)Hedera · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
hashport (external site)hashport · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
HashScan (external site)Hedera Hashgraph, LLC · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Hiero Mirror Node Explorer repository (external site)Hiero (LF Decentralized Trust) · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Hedera wallet (external site)Ledger · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
Hedera support status (external site)Trezor · retrieved Sep 27, 2026
HashPack (external site)HashPack · retrieved Sep 27, 2026

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Funding disclosure

Funding disclosures appear here when an upkeep arrangement exists, in the form “Upkeep funded by [name]; verdicts unaffected.” The funder ledger has not been published yet. Neutrality & funding