Hedera

HBAR CMC #30 in the snapshot

A public distributed ledger using hashgraph consensus and council-operated consensus nodes.

Profile checked 14 Nov 2026Asset ranks captured 14 Nov 2026Snapshot & methodology ↗

01 / THE PURPOSE

What is Hedera for?

Hedera provides token, consensus-message and smart-contract services. Users can submit transactions publicly, while participation in the current mainnet consensus-node set is permissioned.

02 / THE ARCHITECTURE

Three questions about the machinery.

How does it agree?

Consensus & security

Hashgraph organizes gossip events in a directed acyclic graph and derives agreement through virtual voting. Its fault-tolerance guarantees depend on the protocol’s participant and network assumptions.

Where do instructions run?

Execution model

Native services provide common operations without requiring every application to recreate them in a contract. EVM-compatible smart contracts offer another execution path.

What is the token for?

HBAR in the system

HBAR pays network fees and participates in the staking system. Fees are denominated in US dollars but paid in HBAR; that pricing convention does not make HBAR a stablecoin.

03 / THE DESIGN CHOICES

What comes with the design?

Each architecture makes choices about security, performance, coordination, and who can participate.

Public transaction access should not be confused with permissionless consensus-node membership.
Council governance, service throttles and application admin rights are distinct control points.

04 / IN PRACTICE

Follow one use.

Illustrative: an application timestamps a business event through the consensus service. The ledger can attest to ordering without independently establishing that the reported real-world event was true.

05 / CHECK THE EXPLANATION

Sources & snapshot.

Network descriptions use the references below. The CoinMarketCap snapshot determines which assets are in scope and their captured rank; it does not assess the quality of a network.

Hedera · Hashgraph Hedera
Hedera · Consensus nodes Hedera
Hedera · Mainnet and fee model Hedera
CoinMarketCap top 100 snapshot Captured 14 Nov 2026 · See the complete scope audit
Hedera (HBAR) on CoinMarketCap Captured asset rank #30

Profile checked 14 Nov 2026. Network designs and ranked positions can change.