Glossary
Hedera
A permissioned-validator Layer-1 using the Hashgraph consensus algorithm (asynchronous BFT via gossip-about-gossip + virtual voting) for fast deterministic finality.
Hedera, launched in 2019, is a Layer-1 owned and governed by a council of large enterprises (Google, IBM, LG, Boeing, …) rather than by a token-holder DAO. Consensus is the Hashgraph algorithm — gossip-about-gossip plus virtual voting — which delivers fast finality and high throughput at the cost of a permissioned validator set.
The chain supports HBAR, EVM-compatible smart contracts (HSCS), native tokenization (HTS), and a consensus service for ordered messages. The model targets enterprise use cases more than permissionless DeFi.