What is Hedera?
Hedera is a public distributed network that uses directed acyclic graph technology (hashgraph) instead of blockchain. HBAR is its native coin for paying fees and securing the network through staking.
How it works
In hashgraph, nodes exchange transaction information via gossip protocol, and the order of operations is determined by virtual voting — without mining and without forming a chain of blocks. This delivers thousands of transactions per second, finality within seconds, and stable fees of fractions of a cent. The network is governed by a council of major international companies and organizations.
Pros and cons
- Pros: high performance and predictable fees, energy efficiency, enterprise applications (tokenization, data management).
- Cons: council-based governance model is less decentralized, proprietary technology, competition with major smart contract networks.