What Is Hedera & HBAR?
Hedera Hashgraph is a distributed public network that uses a different architecture than traditional blockchains. Instead of blocks, it uses a hashgraph consensus protocol based on gossip-about-gossip and virtual voting.
HBAR is the native cryptocurrency (token) of Hedera. It provides utility in the network for paying fees, staking, and participating in consensus.
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Key Features & Technology
1. Consensus & Security
The Hedera network claims asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerance (aBFT) — meaning it can resist malicious actors up to certain thresholds and still maintain consensus without slowing down.
It uses the gossip-about-gossip protocol: nodes share messages about what they’ve heard, which helps in quickly propagating transactions and reaching agreement efficiently.
2. Throughput & Finality
Hedera claims to support 10,000+ transactions per second (TPS) in a single shard.
Transaction finality is fast: a transaction can be considered final in 3 to 7 seconds.
3. Low Fees & Efficiency
Because of its efficient consensus mechanism and low resource usage, Hedera offers predictably low transaction fees (often very small for basic actions).
It is more energy-efficient compared to proof-of-work blockchains, since there is no mining.
4. Smart Contracts & EVM Compatibility
Hedera supports execution of Solidity smart contracts and provides compatibility with Ethereum tools to leverage the developer ecosystem.
It also offers native support for tokenization services (creating fungible and non-fungible tokens) and built-in services like co
nsensus, file storage, and identity.
