About

Hedera is a public distributed ledger platform that uses the hashgraph consensus mechanism to enable cryptocurrency transactions, smart contracts, tokenization, and decentralized file storage. It supports developers in creating scalable and secure decentralized applications for enterprise and consumer use cases, offering high transaction throughput, low latency, and security across various industries.

History

The idea to build Hedera was conceived in 2015 by computer scientist Leemon Baird, who aimed to create a scalable distributed consensus that would serve as “the trust layer of the internet.” Hence, he developed the Hashgraph Consensus Algorithm and formed Swirlds, Inc. with Mance Harmon in the same year. In 2016, the duo raised seed funding to build a public distributed ledger, launching the project under Hashgraph Consortium LLC.

Other notable events throughout Hedera’s development history include:

• Aug. 24, 2018 - Hedera’s mainnet went live in private beta with the inaugural Hedera Governing Council. The project team formed the Council to oversee the growth and development of the Hedera Hashgraph. The Council consists of global enterprises, including Google, IBM, the London School of Economics, TATA Communications, and Hedera’s founding company, Swirlds, Inc., amongst others.
• Aug. 6, 2020 - Hedera open-sourced its network services (e.g., smart contract, consensus, file, and token services) while releasing its core codebase in “open-review” only.
• Sep. 16, 2021 - The Council approved the formation of an independent foundation, the HBAR Foundation, to bootstrap the growth of Hedera’s ecosystem.
• Dec. 21, 2021 - The Council approved two resolutions:
  • The purchase of the Hashgraph Consensus Algorithm IP from Swirlds, Inc. Of, which the algorithm would eventually go on to be purchased (Aug. 5, 2022) and open-sourced.
  • The dissolution of Hedera Hashgraph, LLC’s Co-Founder roles while reorganizing the project’s management team.
• February 2022 - Hedera’s native smart contract services were upgraded to EVM-compatible smart contracts. These services were incrementally released on mainnet from 2020 to 2022.
• May 1, 2022 - All technical and management team members transitioned to Swirlds Labs, an affiliated entity partially owned by Swirlds, Inc., following the resolution of the board in December 2022. The same month, Mance Harmon and Leemon Baird also transitioned to co-CEO roles at Swirlds Labs.
• July 21, 2022 - Native staking and delegation of HBAR was introduced on mainnet, rolled out in four phases with the final phase completed in August 2023.
• Aug. 16, 2023 - Hedera launched mainnet support for third-party EVM tooling, including (i) JSON-RPC access to the network via third-party providers, (ii) smart contract deployment using Truffle, Hardhat, Foundry, EtherJS, and Web3 JS, and (iii) data indexing support via The Graph.
• Sept. 13, 2023 - Hedera released Stablecoin Studio, an open-source SDK for building stablecoin applications on Hedera.
• Sept. 14, 2023 - The Council’s Board of Directors approved the split of the role and responsibilities of the Board Chair, introducing a new role (President of Hedera Hashgraph, LLC) to assume split responsibilities.
• Nov. 20, 2023 - Hedera launched support for smart contract verification, enabling developers to (i) compare deployed smart contact bytecode to source code and (ii) promote contract code transparency.
• Jan. 16, 2024 - Hedera, together with Tuum Technologies, launched Hedera Wallet Snap, a custom MetaMask plugin for the Hedera Hashgraph.

In July 2025, United States President Donald J. Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law after it was successfully approved by the Senate and U.S. House of Representatives.

In June 2025, The Hedera team has launched Stablecoin Studio, an open-source SDK for issuing and managing stablecoins on the Hedera network.

Following on the regulatory clarity, DTCC added Hedera to its ETF listing framework in September 2025 - a key infrastructure prerequisite for U.S.‑traded crypto ETFs.

Canary Capital and Grayscale have both filed ETF registrations for HBAR with the U.S. SEC, with decisions postponed to November 2025.