Hedera Governing Council Approves $5B in HBAR Tokens to Boost Network Adoption

Hedera Hashgraph’s rotating governing council of 23 organizations has earmarked 10.7 billion HBAR tokens worth $5 billion to accelerate network adoption.

In a press release shared with CoinDesk Thursday, Hedera said 5.4 billion tokens worth $2.5 billion would be allocated to the newly established HBAR Foundation. The remaining amount would go to other initiatives aimed at strengthening the development of the Hedera ecosystem.

Headed by software and M&A industry veteran Shayne Higdon, the HBAR foundation will be an independent organization with autonomy in deploying the HBAR tokens it receives. The foundation aims to boost the Hedera network’s adoption in decentralized finance, non-fungible tokens (NFTS), central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), gaming and other industries.

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

Read more: HBAR Token Hits Record High as IIT Madras Joins Hedera’s Governing Council

Mance Harmon, CEO of Hedera Hashgraph, said the Hedera network is now the most used, energy-efficient, enterprise-grade public ledger on the market, and further growth hinges on empowering additional organizations. “We are pleased that the Hedera Governing Council has made such a significant commitment to accelerate the decentralized growth and usage of the network,” Harmon said.

The foundation and other development initiatives will soon receive the allocated HBAR tokens from Hedera Treasury accounts. The plan to allocate 20% of the token’s supply for development work was approved at the July 14 Governing Council meeting.

“The foundation will receive HBAR and will use it for partnerships and other initiatives,” Harmon said in a Zoom call. “It’s not the case, though, that we’re pushing 20% of supply into the market tomorrow. No, that’s not happening.”

The HBAR tokens will be part of the released supply but will be given as grants to applications and ecosystem partners building on and utilizing the Hedera network over the coming years, he said.

Hedera is a distributed ledger of transactions using a new consensus algorithm known as hashgraph to process more transactions at scale than proof-of-work and proof-of-stake networks. The hashgraph achieves consensus through gossip protocol, a way of multicasting messages across nodes inspired by epidemics, human gossip and social networks.

The platform is governed by leading global organizations like Boeing, Tata Communications, the Indian Institute of Technology, The London School of Economics and Political Science and Wipro. The HBAR token has gained 100% in value this month and was last seen trading near 50 cents.