1. HBAR Coin Project Background

HBAR Coin (Hedera) was founded by American computer scientist Leemon Baird, who invented the Hashgraph algorithm, and Mance Harmon. The Hedera mainnet was officially launched in 2019, and “HBAR” is its native cryptocurrency. Hedera aims to build a high-speed, fair, and secure enterprise-grade public blockchain by improving performance and efficiency through its innovative Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) consensus. Unlike traditional blockchains, Hedera is not built on blocks but uses the unique “Hashgraph” technology, known as the “Trust Layer,” which supports high throughput and low-cost transactions.

Hedera is supported by a powerful governing council, which includes globally renowned institutions such as Google, IBM, and Boeing, demonstrating its ambition in the enterprise application sector. Since its inception, Hedera has continuously innovated in performance, governance, and ecosystem development, providing a solid foundation for decentralized applications.

Source:Hedera (distributed ledger) - Wikipedia

Hedera’s development has seen several major milestones: In 2020, Google Cloud joined the Hedera Governing Council, enhancing the project’s credibility; in September 2021, the Hedera Governing Council decided to allocate about 20% (10.7 billion) of HBAR to an ecosystem development fund, half of which was given to the newly established HBAR Foundation to fund the development of applications in areas such as DeFi, NFTs, and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). By 2024, Hedera had donated its entire source code to the Linux Foundation for hosting and adopted “Hiero” as the open-source project code name, symbolizing the project’s full open-source and community-driven development model. Overall, HBAR Coin, backed by its unique technology and top-tier institutional support, has established a distinct position in the blockchain industry.

Source: Hedera official, Hedera Official, Hedera Co-founder speaking at HederaCon, with the Hedera logo and the “Digital Economy Trust Layer” vision displayed on screen.

2. HBAR Coin Consensus Technology and Architecture

The Hedera network, which HBAR relies on, employs the revolutionary Hashgraph consensus algorithm. This algorithm achieves asynchronous Byzantine fault tolerance (aBFT) level consensus security through the “Gossip about Gossip” protocol (gossip propagation) and a virtual voting mechanism. In simple terms, each node continuously spreads transaction information in a “gossip” manner, accompanied by hashes of prior events, forming a time-ordered Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG). This design eliminates the need for blocks and mining, ensuring the fairness of transaction ordering and significantly improving efficiency.

According to Hedera’s official data, transaction fees can be as low as $0.0001, with an average confirmation time of less than 5 seconds. The network’s theoretical throughput can exceed 10,000 TPS—far surpassing the 5-20 TPS of traditional PoW chains. This high-performance architecture gives Hedera a significant advantage in terms of speed and cost.

From a technical architecture standpoint, Hedera offers several service components: the Hedera Token Service (HTS) supports the issuance and configuration of native tokens and NFTs, with just a few lines of code required to create a token; the Hedera Consensus Service (HCS) provides trusted timestamps and message ordering services, acting as a trust layer for other applications; and the Hedera Smart Contract Service is compatible with Ethereum’s Solidity smart contracts, allowing developers to easily migrate DApps. Additionally, there are file storage services and others. Hedera’s smart contract functionality was upgraded in 2023 to achieve Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) equivalency, allowing developers to deploy contracts on Hedera using Ethereum tools.

It’s worth noting that the Hedera network has undergone continuous technical upgrades. For example, the v0.56 and v0.59 versions introduced support for atomic cross-service transactions (HIP-206) and account authorization features (HIP-906), enhancing the utility of token services and account models. These upgrades have been discussed in the community through the HIP proposal process and approved by the council, reflecting Hedera’s ongoing efforts to improve network functionality and adapt to emerging demands, such as complex operations in DeFi.

In terms of security mechanisms, Hedera employs an enhanced Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus. HBAR holders can participate in staking to help secure the network. Currently, network nodes are operated by Hedera and council members, but the long-term plan is to open the network to thousands of public nodes for consensus. According to Hedera’s roadmap, as technology matures, the network will gradually transition to a permissionless node model, allowing community nodes to join in validation to further enhance decentralization. In conclusion, the underlying technology of HBAR, combining the high performance of the Hashgraph algorithm with the economic security of the PoS mechanism, lays a solid foundation for its ecosystem expansion, while ongoing technical upgrades ensure it remains an industry leader.

3. HBAR Coin Tokenomics

The design of the HBAR token reflects a clear economic model in terms of supply, distribution, and usage. Regarding supply, the total supply of HBAR is fixed at 50 billion tokens. As of April 2025, approximately 42.22 billion HBAR are in circulation, accounting for about 84% of the total supply. It is important to note that HBAR follows a model where the total supply is generated upfront and then gradually released. The initial allocation covered various fields, including the founding team, investors, and ecosystem development, with a clear release schedule. For example, the two founders each received 2% of the tokens (2 billion), which will unlock linearly over 6 years, and early executives held a total of about 5%, which was fully released by 2021.

According to Hedera’s official 2020 forecast, the plan was to have about 17.03 billion HBAR (34% of the total) in circulation by 2025. However, due to the accelerated development of the ecosystem, the actual circulation has far exceeded expectations—thanks primarily to large-scale ecosystem incentive distributions, which brought the tokens into market circulation earlier than anticipated.

In terms of allocation, Hedera’s governing council has clearly defined and locked the supply of HBAR for different purposes. According to the latest report from March 2025, the distribution of HBAR’s total supply is as follows:

• Ecosystem Development and Open Source: 25.24 billion HBAR, accounting for 50.5% of the total supply, is allocated to support Hedera ecosystem projects, developer incentives, and grants from the HBAR Foundation. This is the largest portion, reflecting Hedera’s focus on ecosystem development. Since its establishment in 2021, the HBAR Foundation has received 5.35 billion HBAR and an additional 4.86 billion HBAR in grants authorized by the council to fund applications in DeFi, NFTs, gaming, supply chain, and other areas.

• Early Investment Agreements: 12.69 billion HBAR, accounting for 25.4%, corresponds to the SAFT presale and strategic investors who subscribed after the network’s launch. These tokens follow a predetermined unlocking schedule and are delivered to the initial supporters of Hedera.

• Network Governance and Operations: 8.12 billion HBAR, accounting for 16.2%, is used for Hedera’s node rewards, council operational expenses, and team compensation. This includes rewards for the founding team and employees, ensuring incentives for network maintainers. This portion also covers subsidies for the operation of council nodes, which were initially paid in USD or HBAR.

• Initial Development and Licensing Costs: 3.88 billion HBAR, accounting for 7.8%, is primarily used to pay early development expenses and the licensing costs for the Hashgraph algorithm. Since Hedera fully acquired the Hashgraph patent and made it open-source in 2022, such licensing expenses have ceased, and the remaining funds are now used to support technical open-source initiatives and upgrades.

• Unallocated Reserves: Approximately 67 million HBAR, accounting for 0.13%, remains unallocated and is reserved as strategic capital for future use.

This allocation fully reflects the planned and transparent nature of the HBAR economic model. Hedera regularly publishes financial reportsFinancial Report (Treasury Management Report), openly tracking token movements in various accounts to ensure the community is informed about changes in supply. At the end of 2023, the council approved a new allocation plan, injecting more HBAR into independent entities such as the HBAR Foundation, Hashgraph Association, and DLT Scientific Foundation to support Web3 innovation and research and education initiatives.

In terms of usage, HBAR plays multiple roles in the Hedera ecosystem: First, it is network fuel, used to pay for transaction fees and smart contract gas fees, ensuring the network operates. Due to Hedera’s high performance, transaction fees are extremely low, but HBAR is indispensable as the billing unit.

Second, HBAR is used for staking, enhancing network security. Although nodes are currently mainly operated by the Governing Council, users can delegate their HBAR for staking to support Council nodes and receive rewards. In the future, the network will introduce community node staking to participate in consensus. In addition, HBAR also represents governance voting power (indirectly through holding and participating in community proposals), influencing the direction of HIP proposals.

Finally, large-scale HBAR funds are used for ecosystem incentives, through grants from the HBAR Foundation, hackathon prizes, and other forms, to encourage developers and enterprises to build applications on Hedera. This “token-fed ecosystem” model significantly expanded Hedera’s application landscape between 2021–2024, such as funding projects like the Karate Combat on-chain sports league and the Panacea medical collaboration from Photon Network.

Overall, the HBAR tokenomics model balances network security and ecosystem development. A fixed supply cap alleviates inflation pressure, and a clear allocation plan ensures that funds are spent wisely. With the large-scale input of ecosystem funds, HBAR’s circulating supply is approaching the limit (currently 99.87% of total supply has been allocated). The future value of the token will depend more on actual network demand and application growth. Investors should closely monitor Hedera ecosystem project progress and annualized staking returns, as these factors will influence the intrinsic value support for HBAR.

4. HBAR Coin Market Performance and Price Trend

Since issuance, HBAR’s market performance has experienced sharp rises and falls, reflecting both the crypto industry cycle and the project’s own progress.

Historical Price Review: After Hedera’s mainnet went live in September 2019, HBAR started trading on the secondary market. Prices were initially sluggish, hitting a historic low of around $0.0100 in January 2020.

With project advancement and a bull market trend, HBAR performed well in 2021. On September 16, 2021, it surged to an all-time high of $0.5701 (coinciding with the second anniversary of the mainnet launch), showing a remarkable gain from the beginning of the year. However, during the crypto winter of 2022, HBAR pulled back with the broader market and consolidated in the $0.05–$0.10 range throughout 2022–2023.

Entering late 2023, HBAR regained momentum amid market recovery and positive Hedera ecosystem news (such as open-sourcing and new partners), and briefly broke the $0.20 mark in early 2024. According to statistics, in February 2024, HBAR’s market cap reached about $9.44 billion. However, price fluctuations persist. For example, in early 2025, as Bitcoin led a rally, HBAR followed and rose to around $0.22, but later retreated.

As of April 20, 2025, HBAR’s price is around $0.165, with a market cap of about $6.9 billion, ranking in the top 20 of all cryptocurrencies by market cap. This means HBAR still has more than 70% drawdown from its historical high, showing that the bear market effects of the past two years have not fully faded.

Source:Coinmarketcap data

From a trading indicator perspective, HBAR currently sees an average daily trading volume of around $80 million to $100 million, indicating ample market liquidity. Its volatility is moderate, placing it in the mid-range among mainstream large-cap blockchain tokens. Notably, the growth in circulating supply of HBAR has been slowing (approaching its cap since the end of 2024), which helps ease supply-side pressure to some extent. At the same time, tangible project progress—such as ecosystem launches and rising transaction counts—has contributed positively to market confidence.

According to official data from Hedera, the network has processed billions of cumulative transactions, and its daily on-chain transaction count consistently ranks among the top public blockchains, earning it the title of “one of the most used public chains.” While this figure includes a large number of regular system messages, real-world enterprise use cases—such as TrustToken’s carbon trading and Atma.io’s supply chain tracking—also contribute genuine transaction volume. This level of on-chain activity may translate into greater investor recognition of HBAR’s value over the medium to long term.

In terms of price forecasts, market analysts hold differing views on HBAR’s future performance. According to Gate.io’s AI-powered prediction model, the average HBAR price in 2025 is projected to be around $0.164. In a bullish scenario, it could reach approximately $0.2393, while in a bearish scenario, it may fall to around $0.1541. The model suggests a relatively stable and slightly upward trend for HBAR in 2025. Looking further ahead to 2030, the model estimates a potential peak price of around $0.3815—representing a 132% increase from the current level. This suggests HBAR could see over a 2x cumulative gain over the next five years, although the forecast is relatively conservative. For more insights, refer to Gate.io’s article.Hedera Price Prediction & Forecast for 2025, 2026, 2030 | Gate.io)

It’s important to note, however, that the crypto market is highly unpredictable. For example, during the 2023–2024 cycle, many institutions overestimated the strength of the bull market, which turned out to be more subdued. Investors should view forecasts with caution and prepare for various outcomes. From a technical analysis standpoint, HBAR’s price appears to be consolidating between the $0.15–$0.20 range, with repeated battles between support and resistance. A breakout above $0.25 would likely require a strong catalyst on the fundamentals side. Conversely, a drop below $0.10 could trigger a longer period of consolidation. Therefore, investors tracking HBAR should remain aware of both the potential and risks, adjusting strategies based on project developments and evolving market sentiment.

Source:Gate.io Spot Trading

5. Conclusion

As the value carrier of the Hedera network, HBAR Coin’s future development hinges on the dual driving forces of technological maturity and ecosystem expansion. On the technical front, Hedera’s Hashgraph consensus mechanism and high-performance architecture give it the potential to compete as a next-generation public blockchain infrastructure. Ongoing technical upgrades—such as open-sourcing and EVM compatibility—further enhance the network’s competitiveness.

From an ecosystem and application perspective, a strong Governing Council and substantial ecological funding have enabled Hedera to rapidly expand its footprint. The network has established a presence in both enterprise-grade use cases and emerging sectors like AI and RWA (real-world assets). Looking ahead, HBAR has the opportunity to ride the wave of large-scale blockchain adoption and see significant value appreciation. However, it also faces challenges from industry competition and its own decentralization process.

For investors, understanding the technology and fundamentals behind HBAR is essential. Only by deeply grasping the project’s strengths and risks can one make rational decisions amid market fluctuations. In the long term, if Hedera can deliver on its vision of becoming the “gold standard of public blockchains”Hello future | HBAR) HBAR is well-positioned to secure a meaningful place in the future of the crypto landscape—making it a digital asset worth ongoing attention and study.

Readers can access the latest HBAR market trends via mainstream and regulated exchanges like Gate.io, and Gate Learnenhance their blockchain knowledge through educational resources such as Gate Learn. For more details, visit the official website to download the [ Gate.io Appand experience secure and convenient trading services.