$5 billion allocated to develop the Hedera ecosystem

The Hedera Governing Council has allocated $5 billion of Hedera Hashgraph in an effort to incentivise and fund the expansion of its ecosystem.

The 5.35 billion funding represents 20% of the total Hedera Hashgraph (HBAR) supply and will be delivered through an independent HBAR Foundation.

Serial blockchain executive Shayne Higdon has been tipped to head the new foundation.

Ahead of him lies a big challenge – delivering the growth necessary for Hedera Hashgraph to compete in the top 10 with the likes of Solana and Cardano.

The $5bn package put forward to the Hedera Governing Council in a resolution back in July, can be seen as a serious commitment to scaling up the blockchain.

Speaking to Coin Rivet, Mark Radcliffe – partner at DLA Piper and a member of the Hedera Governing Council – explained the move was aimed at driving decentralisation of the blockchain.

“We believe that for the Hedera network to reach its full potential as the trust layer of the internet, we must continue its strategy of decentralising the governance of the ecosystem, which started with its unique Hedera Governing Council structure,” he said.

“Our aim with the transfer of these assets is to ensure that decisions about the growth of the network will continue to be further decentralised through the role of the independent HBAR Foundation.”

An independent and autonomous HBAR Foundation will be able to allocate grants and funding to developers, start-ups, and other organisations.

The mission is simple: deliver DeFi, iGaming, NFTs, and CBDCs to the Hedera ecosystem.

However, it appears the future of Hedera Hashgraph is in safe hands. Shane Higdon has extensive experience in software enterprise and venture capital, having delivered corporate ventures and mergers in the SaaS and multi-cloud space.

“The Hedera network is the most widely used public ledger in the world, and with the establishment of the HBAR Foundation we aim to drive exponential adoption, growth, and value,” said the incoming CEO.

“Our mission is to fund a future where entrepreneurs form digitally-native economies and ecosystems, controlling their own assets, identities, data, marketplaces, and more. We are excited to engage with and support organisations and teams that share this vision.”

What is Hedera Hashgraph and the governing council?

Hedera Hashgraph is an innovative distributed ledger that utilises a unique form of technology called directed acyclic graph (or simply DAG – which records information on unique data structures instead of in a linear chain as with normal blockchains).

It boasts being lightening fast thanks to an additional feature called the asynchronous Byzantine-Fault Tolerance (aBFT) consensus mechanism.

Founder and Chief Scientist at Hedera Hashgraph, Dr Leemon Baird, explained how aBFT comes into play with HBAR.

“Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) means that when you’re trying to figure out the order of transactions, there comes a moment in time when you know that you have reached consensus,” he explained.

“Byzantine fault tolerance means three things: 1) we are going to come to consensus, 2) we will know when we’ve come to consensus, and 3) we’re never wrong – you’re mathematically guaranteed to reach the exact same consensus. That’s Byzantine.

“[When a BFT is asynchronous it means that it] makes no assumptions about how fast messages are passed over the internet, making it resilient to DDoS attacks, botnets, and firewalls.

“Hashgraph is mathematically guaranteed to reach consensus and is secure as long as less than one-third of participants are malicious.”

The network is open-source and decentralised, with a strategic focus on corporate and institutional adoption versus mass adoption.

Hedera’s Governing Council is responsible for the project’s development, and currently comprises 23 organisations from around the world including Boeing, Chainlink Labs, Deutsche Telekom, EDF (Électricité de France), Google, IBM, LG Electronics, London School of Economics (LSE), Standard Bank Group and Tata Communications, amongst many others.

Participating organisations are responsible for governing the network (including treasury allocation) and operating nodes.

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