Hedera Hashgraph – What is the hype all about?

Ever since the blockchain has revealed to the globe, we have noticed every feasible innovation nearby this technology and with every single innovation, there is always a possibility for the fresh one. From the deployment of the smart contracts to storing the files on the Blockchain. First originated with the concept of financial transactions and then for several reasons. We have come a long way in the last ten years.

The debate on the use cases of the blockchain can burn all the livable time in this world. Take any area, and you’ll find this tech is there to say “Hi”. The projects keep coming and coming and moreover, every project has its original design and a commitment to jump off the obstacle. So, in these kinds of circumstances, we can’t address all the promising projects, but we can surely grab a few. We’ll be discussing today the freshly launched project Hedera Hashgraph.

The tagline they used while unveiling the project is worth catching all the eyeballs.

“Trust Layer of the Internet”

Let’s discover the reality.

Introduction to the Hedera Hashgraph

Hedera is a decentralized public network just like some of the other blockchains out there. It can be termed the next era of blockchain which is fast, fair and secure. Some of the technological highlights they mentioned are:

• It does gossip about the gossip with virtual voting which makes it very fast.
• The ordering of the events is time-stamped so no-one can unfairly manipulate the events so that makes it fair.
• It works on the highest level of security we could have i.e. ABFT (Asynchronous Byzantine fault Tolerance) to make it secure.

The intention behind this innovation is to form a network where anyone can upload a smart contract and runs it; it can store files; use a cryptocurrency and it is anonymous. This distributed ledger technology is based on the consensus layer which they call a hashgraph consensus algorithm.

The project is offering three services presently, which are:

1. Smart Contracts
2. File Service
3. Cryptocurrency

In extension to that, they’ve also declared the fourth service which is Hedera Consensus Service called HCs. This service is not yet fully functional but will be in practice soon.

Before the project was announced, dozens of companies had already deployed smart contracts. The highest catching thing in the project is that they support 10,000 transactions per second which can be a game-changer in the financial industry. That means it is extremely economical and can do micropayments too. A tiny fraction of the cent can be sent and the validity appears in lightning speed.

Micropayments are the most necessitated action in the past couple of years with this kind of speed. Just like some days ago, I was surfing the internet on the AdBlock browser. I landed on the page of the prominent news website and they didn’t allow me to enter their domain without seeing the Ads. I simply thought, what if my browser will send the micropayment of the particular article rather than showing some kind of Ads that spies on me and a threat to my digital security and privacy.

Even in the sense of finality, it is very fast, when you can pay someone within seconds, they can validate the transaction and you can move on and it is purely anonymous, just like the Cryptocurrency pioneer Bitcoin.

Let’s review some of the Principal Features of this multi-skilled project

Smart Contracts

The term smart contract comes into existence when the Ethereum brought programmability in the Blockchain ecosystem. The smart contracts are the second generation of the Blockchain. Multiple Blockchain uses multiple languages and parameters to deploy the smart contract but Hedera has played big bet by allowing developers to write the smart contracts in Solidity (Ethereum’s Smart Contract Language). The additional features of their smart contracts are giving the optional unusual functionalities like Admin Keys and Fair Ordering.

Understanding the Admin Keys: The Admin Key is not a mandatory option to opt for. If you wish to lose the money by believing the code is the law and wants to deploy the contract with no keys, you can do that. The Admin keys have an important function to play in this. It gives you an ability to put in an admin key and then the admin key can be used to recover it for the developer, only if anything goes wrong. It works as the second secure mechanism while deploying smart contracts.

The admin key could be an entryway key for a group of binding arbitration judges. If the community discovers, there is a bug in the written code or something was unexpected but they really would have wanted it to be something else, then they can all agree in the majority and can overrule the contract in any arbitrary way. But all the time the things are in your hands if you’re the owner of that particular smart contract.

If the developer believes and moreover affords to lose money while deploying smart contracts, they can do that. Admin keys just give the power to the developers to get more flexible to have an emergency backup that could overrule it but only if the community allows it and agree on this.

Fair Ordering: We have already discussed fair ordering in brief above but to understand the concept in a full way, we are considering some more information here. The smart contract can get into the auction page. But no smart contract is prioritized, important here. The equality comes into the picture here. The Blockchain itself handles them in order so it will be fair to everyone. No miner can manipulate the order or influence your order or leave our order.

File Service

Storing files on the blockchain is not an uncommon & innovative idea to get in the Blockchain ecosystem. The blockchain projects are previously there to welcome us with storing the documents safely and securely. They should’ve come up with the extended idea of storing abilities. There is no doubt that the project is a multi-skilled and we can all the things at one place. The idea of the File Service is to store the files, read them, update them, delete them as we all can imagine but here we can do more with the files. 

Here, the user can have multiple keys on the file where all the keys have to agree to put the file in but with the permission of a single key, the user can remove it. 

Why would anyone do that and what kind of new thing is this? 

This looks like an unwanted thing. But it can work like a revocation service.

Learning with an example: While graduating from college, the college decided to store my degree on the Blockchain where we both have to match on it that I passed the bachelors from this college. This will certainly be digitally signed and authenticated degree stored in the blockchain by the college. In the future, if I do something incorrect that the college needs to revocate my degree, then they don’t need any permission from me to that. And in another case, if I have to do that. Well, no degree holder will do that but surely can do that if the brain gets washed. 

The transaction will be recorded in the ledger because the main idea of the blockchain is that we can’t do a change in the ledger.

All the features are interconnected with others. It simply happens because of the way the keys work. Both the keys need to put in but only one is required for the back out. The same thing can be done with the multi-layered keys.

There are many other things which can be used in this File Service areas like Government Identities, Work cards, etc.

Cryptocurrency:

Where there is public blockchain, there is a crypto coin linked to that. The cryptocurrency this project offers is HBARS. It mainly works as a network fuel for network protection. It can be used while storing the files and deployment of smart contracts. It can also be send/receive as other cryptocurrencies but with the speed of 10,000 transactions per second.

Hedera Hashgraph is a Proof-of-Stake network where the token is contributed to the consensus and incentivize the rightful behavior. Moreover, no license required to use the network and it is anonymous.

Token Information

Total Supply – 50 billion coins

Currency Denominations

gigabar 1 Gℏ = 1,000,000,000 ℏ

megabar 1 Mℏ = 1,000,000 ℏ

kilobar 1 kℏ = 1,000 ℏ

hbar 1 ℏ = 1 ℏ

millibar 1,000 mℏ = 1 ℏ

microbar 1,000,000 μℏ = 1 ℏ

tinybar 100,000,000 tℏ = 1 ℏ

The prime motive of the Hedera Hashgraph is Speed (which they’re giving), security (agreeing on that too), stability (long term process will define that) and governance (associating with big names).

The Hedera Hashgraph has a governing council that defines the roadmap of the project but the community is there to give inputs. They’ve established a framework of global networks.

The governing council of Hedera has around 35 highly diversified organizations around the globe. As above said, the council members are committed to governing the changes to bring stability to the public network. The responsibilities of the governing council are to host and maintain initial network nodes; overseeing the software run by the hundreds of thousands of nodes at a scale.

Some of the big names in the council are:

• Boeing
• Deutsche Telekom
• DLA Piper
• IBM
• Magalu
• Swisscom Blockchain
• Tata Communication, etc

All the council members stand equally in the council. In addition to that, the hashgraph consensus algorithm has an open review code, the network and the cryptocurrency have a no-fork guarantee. For stability and the long term confidence for the application builders, it is a good thing to do. The governing council members have a three-year maximum term to serve with up to two consecutive terms.

UseCases:

Around 30 projects including healthcare, logistics, media, and finance have already been deployed on the Blockchain of the Hedera Hashgraph. Some of the listed projects are as below which also joined them while unveiling the project during Livestream:

• AdsDax
• Power Transition
• Certara
• Chainlink

Advantages over the Competitors EOS, Ethereum

There are various advantages this project holds against the well-hype competitors in the market like EOS, Ethereum.

Transaction Speed

HBARS: 10,000 transactions per second

Ethereum: 20 transactions per second

EOS: Achieved around 3000 transactions per second.

All three projects offer a DApp ecosystem but Hedera Hashgraph becomes more encouraging by providing an additional feature called Admin Key. The Ethereum works on the Proof-of-Stake mechanism, EOS works on DPOS (Delegated Proof-of-Stake) mechanism whereas this project uses Proof-of-Stake.  

The project also claims that they have got a broader thriving ecosystem comparison to other running blockchain projects. Like the Wallet Providers, System Integrators, Mirror Nodes, Oracles, Specialised Websites Run by Community, Hedera Explorers, Open Source Tools & SDKs. 

The project looks promising and has the strength to solve multiple arguments on a single platform. Let’s see if this project can also make some reputation and space in the blockchain like Ethereum and EOS.