Hedera

Between 2012 and 2015, Leemon Baird developed the idea that nodes could gossip not only transactions but the history of their conversations. The resulting graph lets every node infer how others would vote, reducing consensus to computation over shared history. He and longtime collaborator Mance Harmon formed Swirlds to test the invention, and Baird published the technical paper in May 2016.

When the pair unveiled Hedera in New York on March 13, 2018, the algorithm was only half the proposition. Harmon argued that a public ledger also needed durable rule-making. Their answer was a council of large organizations from different countries and industries, each with a vote and limited terms. Patents and a no-fork guarantee were presented as safeguards for that arrangement.

Hedera brought mainnet online on August 24, 2018 and created all 50 billion HBAR at once. The first five Council organizations were announced the following February. By the time public access opened on September 16, 2019, a user could create an account, pay HBAR and deploy an application without Council permission.

Public access did not open the consensus-node roster: Council organizations continued to operate it. The later native-staking system lets users choose a node and add HBAR to its consensus weight. That choice still does not appoint a Council organization or give the holder a vote on network policy.

On January 19, 2022, the Council voted to buy the hashgraph intellectual property from Swirlds and release the code under Apache 2.0. The stated rationale had changed since 2018: technical controls against state splits were considered mature enough that patents were no longer needed as a defensive wall.

The same decision redrew the organization. Effective May 1, Baird, Harmon and Hedera's development and management teams moved to Swirlds Labs. The Council contracted for essential services while retaining the tasks that defined its authority: network governance, standards, policy and treasury management.

In September 2024, Hedera contributed its core software to Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust as Hiero. Contributors gained a neutral upstream home and an Apache-licensed codebase. A developer can now inspect, modify and run that software without asking the Hedera Council.

Hedera mainnet remains a specific deployment. The current Council page reports 34 organizations and says only members run nodes, approve technology updates and hold governance votes. Its 2026 minutes record decisions on feature deployment, transaction prices and the node roster. Open-source governance and network governance now sit in different institutions.

HBAR pays for network use and can be staked to a Council node without transferring custody. That stake affects the node's consensus weight and may receive rewards under Council-set rules. It does not elect Council members, approve software or authorize treasury transfers; those are powers of the LLC's members.

The supply boundary shows the same structure. All 50 billion HBAR were pre-minted. At the reviewed Mirror Node timestamp, roughly 43.83 billion were classified as released from Council control. The LLC Agreement requires unanimity to raise the total above 50 billion, while the Council decides how unreleased treasury HBAR are allocated and released. The holder's influence is inside consensus; the Council's authority surrounds the network that runs it.