Hedera Hashgraph, a DLT project that is popular for being a competitor of Blockchain, launched its mainnet beta for public.
The network, since December 2018, was available in testing environment to world’s largest corporations and developers. But is now made available for the public to create an account or build a decentralized app on the network.
Additionally, the system’s HBAR tokens is distributed to the public. The first tokens, which counts for more than 379M, is given to investors who participated in the $124M crowdsale that took place in the form of three rounds between March, 2018 and August 2018.
Also, another 1.95M tokens are given to advisors, vendors, and other participants. Whereas, the balance of 50B supply of HBARs is announced to be released by the network’s governing council in the coming 15 years.
With this, 12 cryptocurrency exchanges and over-the-counter (OTC) desks have been unveiled to introduce HBAR among their trading tokens. This included AlgoZ, Bering Waters, GSP, OKCoin, and xFutures.
The Hedera team has also announced that nearly 26 dApps will go live on the Hedera network. This includes AdsDax, Chainlink, and Certera.
But, the questions that arise here are – What makes it so special? And can it really replace Blockchain in the future?
Let’s find out the answers in this blog, beginning with a simple definition of what is Hedera Hashgraph.
What is Hedera Hashgraph?
Hedera Hashgraph, just like Blockchain, is a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) project. However, it is based on Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) structure to record data in blocks.
“This is the first instance globally of hashgraph being put to the test,” said Mance Harmon, CEO at Hedera. “It’s a different data structure, different technology and looks nothing like a blockchain, but solves the same kinds of problems with better security and better performance.”
As claimed by the creators of Hashgraph, it is quite different from other Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs), especially in terms of its working model.
Working Model of Hedera Hashgraph
Unlike Blockchain that simply group transaction data together and put them into blocks linked using cryptography, Hashgraph works using Gossip Protocol and Virtual Voting mechanism.
In a Hashgraph network, each member or node in the network can distribute information (called Events) on created transactions that were received from other nodes to haphazardly picked neighbour nodes. From here, the neighbour nodes will be responsible for gathering the received event with related information derived from other nodes to a new event. And eventually, distribute the new event to its neighbour nodes. This process is repeated till all the participating nodes get familiar with the data created or shared at the beginning of the process.
Now since each node is already familiar with what the other nodes know, they can easily predict what others will vote. Something that appears as a Virtual voting.
While the working model shows that Hedera Hashgraph is different from Blockchain, there are various other factors that proves it offers better facilities that Blockchain development.
Hedera Hashgraph vs Blockchain: Features that Makes the Former Better
1. Hedera Hashgroup network offers higher transactions per second (TPS) than what Blockchain networks deliver. While Bitcoin and Ethereum performs 2.8 and 15 transactions per second, respectively, Hashgroup supports around 10,000 transactions per second.
And the best part, the company has announced that they will increase the transaction numbers in the future.
2. Hashgroup follows PoS (Proof-of-Stake) consensus mechanism with which it empowers transactions to come in the order they were recorded. And eventually, settle in the same amount of time. This makes it more unbiased and trustworthy than Bitcoin that works with PoW (Proof-of-Work) mechanism.
3. This network code is not open-source. It is patented, which makes it possible to prevent copying of the codebase or forking.
4. Since hashgraph does not store all transaction history on the ledger, its memory consumption is much lower than what is associated with regular blockchains.
5. Another feature that makes Hashgraph stand out is that it allows developers to write code in Java and LISP, along with Solidity programming language. Something that increases the probability of Blockchain developers taking a keen interest in this DLT project.
6. Not just high speed, Hedera’s hashgraph also offers finality and instant payments. Something that was a challenge with blockchains like Bitcoin where around 70% of transactions settle in every 10 minutes while some transactions never even reach finality.
7. Above all, Hashgraph offers an opportunity to deal with challenges associated with Smart Contracts.
In traditional networks, a smart contract is immutable. Meaning, you cannot change the condition and design structure when facing buys and uneven behavior. You can only replace it with a new one.
However, Hedera Hashgraph comes with an optional mechanism to allow ‘binding arbitration’ for Smart contracts. Under this mechanism, the design and conditions of a Smart Contract can be changed if several associated parties agree to the process.
Developers can also go for the option to pick the contract’s subsequent mutability at the time of deployment. Or, they can deploy the contract using a list of public key of arbitrators that can edit the code, introduce new features, fix bugs, or reverse any particular transaction.
This way, the Hedera Hashgraph network can provide better solutions to pertaining challenges while maintaining immutability.
Hashgraph vs Blockchain: Who Will Rule the Future?
No doubt, Hashgraph holds the potential to surpass Blockchain by addressing real issues, it is still new in the market. It does not enjoy the attention and adoption like Blockchain development solutions. So, while it is possible that Hashgraph might defeat Blockchain someday, it might not if the Blockchain improves its list of shortcomings.
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