Welcome to the Hedera Overview, providing a suite of updates for Hedera enthusiasts, users, developers and curious-minded web3 users about all that’s happening in the ecosystem.
In this edition, we cover Hedera's contribution of CLPR, its bridgeless cross-ledger protocol, to the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust Labs; Hedera Council's newest partners, WISeKey and SpaceDev; and Hedera's expanding footprint across payments, developer tooling, and finance.
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The Ecosystem Insights
HBAR token price: $0.083 (+6.41%)
Market cap: $3.67B (+7.94%)
Total value locked (TVL): $33.2M (+12.3%)
Transactions per second: 13.66 (+168.37%)
The percentages and metrics are calculated from its change over a 14-day time frame, unless noted otherwise.
Hedera Highlights
Gregg Bell, CIO of Hashgraph: How Crypto’s User Base Has Changed
In September, Gregg Bell spoke to Jacquelyn Melinek about the shift from individualized use of crypto and decentralized finance to an environment where DLT is being widely embraced by institutions and governments.
Today, everyone from financial giants like BlackRock to payments behemoths like PayPal have an insatiable appetite for the possibilities that blockchain presents. According to Gregg Bell, Chief Investment Officer of Hashgraph, it’s down to the fact that crypto solves the trust problem.
“Governments are really excited about tokenized money, they're really excited about tokenized title and real estate," he said on StrataMedia’s Talking Tokens podcast recently on the sidelines of the RWA Summit, describing how a digital asset earns credibility through layered attestations. That "convergent validity," as he put it, is what makes an asset usable as collateral once it's recorded on a ledger, unlocking "a tremendous amount of latent capital."
“There was a time when the users of this technology were individuals, and that was really empowering financial freedom, and creating more productivity of these assets that are latent,” he said. “Now that's moving into enterprises, into businesses that are beginning to have the risk tolerance to engage with this industry. [...] It's an incredible technology with a very wide range of applications but the user base is changing and that to me has been what has been really exciting.”
That pattern is visible in who actually runs Hedera's network, he noted. Google, IBM, Mondelez, Ubisoft, McLaren, and Repsol all sit on the Hedera Council, each running a node to secure transaction ordering while operating the infrastructure that keeps the network reliable.Still, Bell said today's adoption wave is concentrated in financial services, where institutions like Standard Bank and Aberdeen run Hedera directly. Much of this activity stays out of the headlines because crypto assets aren’t priced like securities, he said, pointing to Mondelez using Hedera to cut global coupon fraud as an example.
For Bell, Hedera's advantage is that it was built to clear the two hurdles that stalled earlier enterprise blockchain efforts: regulatory clarity and interoperability that doesn't depend on bridges. That combination, he argued, is what lets institutions move past pilots and start treating the network as infrastructure they can actually depend on.
The conversation also touched upon where crypto adoption is coming from, and how Hashgraph is working with institutions, fintechs, developers, and others to bring ledger technology to the masses.
To listen to the full episode, follow Talking Tokens on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Music.
Unpacking the hash
Hedera has contributed CLPR, its cross-ledger protocol, to Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust (LFDT) Labs.
The protocol, which is governed by its own LFDT Lab, is completely open source, allowing developers to propose upgrades, make changes, and integrate the code in beta.
The announcement ran alongside Hashgraph’s Cross-Ledger Early Adopter Program, which encourages fintechs, institutions, asset issuers, liquidity providers, and corporations to explore use cases surrounding in-flight FX, cross-ledger settlement, and collateral mobility.
Hedera released a feature that lets developers pull an account’s HBAR balance from the Mirror Node REST API using the native SDK interface.
The feature is an upgrade from a previous function that relied on REST calls and was more technical.
Hedera is depreciating smart contract calls within Atomic Batch Transactions.
Atomic Batch Transactions, which allow multiple actions to be executed within the same transaction, will now be limited to token, topic, or account transactions.
The change is meant to improve the EVM compatibility of Atomic Batch Transactions. Developers have been instructed to submit smart contract calls independently or use native features.
Hedera announced several new upgrades and standards for AI agents in September:
Ecosystem players
HashPack, Hedera’s self-custodial wallet, has partnered with SODAX to offer tokenized stocks on Robinhood, along with other RWAs.
Hedera joined the U.K.’s Wholesale Digital Markets Champion Taskforce to establish a tokenized wholesale financial markets ecosystem, and ensure interoperability with the legacy financial system.
Until next time!
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This information is for entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial advice, nor should it be used to make investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies are high risk and you should consult a financial professional before making any financial decisions. Make sure you do your own research.