Hedera (HBAR) Ecosystem Update

The State of Hedera

Hedera’s most recent item of exciting news saw the Hedera layer-1 blockchain surpass a staggering 19 billion transactions, not long after breaking through the 18 billion transaction mark.

At time of writing, Hedera’s transaction count shows north of 19.9 billion transactions and is expected to surpass 20 billion in coming days/hours. 

Furthermore, Hedera’s TVL appears to be holding strong at just about the $30 million mark, in spite of crypto market turbulence in recent weeks. 

Hedera’s locked value has appeared largely immune to recent DeFi woes, being less impacted than some other high-profile networks, perhaps owing to its loyal following and participant-base. However, the network hit an all time high total value locked in February 2023, at nearly $46 million, and it is yet to be seen whether or not the network will reach such levels again in short order. 

Hedera’s Updates – Q3 2023

The months of July and August saw some interesting updates and developments emerge from Hedera’s core ecosystem.

Perhaps its most significant recent development comes in the form of integration into the Federal Reserve’s FedNow application, which added Dropp, a Hedera-based micropayments platform, in August. 

However, the network received exciting news in early August too, when automobile-giants, Kia and Hyundai, introduced a CO2 emissions monitoring system, built using Hedera’s infrastructure. 

However, Hedera’s blog further points to the promising appointment of Andrew Aitken as Chief Open Source Officer for the network. Aitken has experience in advisory roles for not only Microsoft, but also the US White House itself, and the new executive could prove pivotal in ensuring Hedera remains both accessible, and an attractive destination for prospective builders and developers.

“What drew me to Hedera was the opportunity to work with such an incredibly smart group of people, community, and Governing Council members, to further establish Hedera as the standard for enterprise blockchains. Though Hedera did not start out its journey as an open source project, it has always had a focus on serving the community. I’m joining the firm to ensure we build a broad ecosystem of participants, continue to deliver achievements in innovation, and provide long-term opportunities through community engagement and transparency in our actions.”, said Aitken

July also saw Shinhan Bank, reportedly South Korea’s first modern bank, Thailand’s SCB TechX, as well as Taiwan’s largest financial institution, successfully test the proof-of-concept for a stablecoin remittance platform, built using Hedera’s infrastructure.

Offering a real-world use-case for Hedera, the above could constitute a very exciting update indeed, potentially paving the way for Hedera to compete with other high profile payment networks active in the industry. 

Hedera’s HBAR Token

At time of writing, HBAR is sitting at around the $0.05 price mark, with a market capitalization of around $1.6 billion, but a fully diluted value of approximately $2.4 billion.

Hedera’s HBAR token was noted to have largely weathered the market during the brief crypto rout that took place in mid-August, perhaps facilitated by some of the aforementioned updates and announcements. However, HBAR has still been hit hard by recent market turmoil. 

Whether or not the HBAR token can achieve its all-time high price and market cap, of $0.48 and $6.6 billion respectively, is yet to be determined. However, Hedera’s community will be hoping that both exciting ecosystem updates, as well as wider market resurgence, will make this possible.