Google, IBM, and Boeing are not passive investors. ivy. These are active node operators, running the infrastructure that validates transactions on the network. This is the core of how Hedera works. A council of up to 39 global organizations controls the consensus layer, votes on protocol decisions, and keeps the network running. As of June 2026, at least 32 of these seats are filled, following Accenture’s addition in April 2026.
What is the Hedera Council?
The Hedera Council (formerly known as the Hedera Management Council, rebranded in May 2025) is an association of major global organizations that collectively manage the Hedera public distributed ledger. Regardless of the size of the company, each member has an equal vote on protocol decisions. Google gets the same votes as university research institutes.
The structure is modeled after Visa’s original 1968 governance framework, which used a council of member banks to operate a shared payments network without the control of a single institution.
Current members are:
- Google, IBM, Dell, LG Electronics (technology field)
- Boeing and FedEx (logistics and aerospace, both companies will hold seats in 2026)
- Deutsche Telekom and Tata Communications (telecommunications)
- Standard Bank, Nomura Holdings, Shinhan Bank (financial services)
- Chainlink Labs and Ubisoft (cryptocurrency and gaming)
- University College London and London School of Economics (academic)
- McLaren Racing will join in March 2026
- Accenture joins in April 2026 to build enterprise AI governance infrastructure on the network
Each council member must run a consensus node on their own infrastructure or through a public cloud provider. No single entity can hold most of the nodes. The number of council members will increase to at least 32 members, with a goal of a maximum of 39 members.
Why do these companies actually want to run nodes?
The honest answer involves two things: accountability and skin in the game.
When a node is operated by Boeing or IBM, a company’s reputation is tied to the reliability of the network. In the event of a network failure or malfunction, council members will be publicly associated with the failure. Anonymous validators on the network such as: Bitcoin or Ethereum There is no comparable reputational damage.
From a practical perspective, by running nodes, these organizations have a direct impact on how the network evolves. Council members are responsible for software updates, pricing, $HBAR Treasury and Regulatory Compliance Decisions. They are not users of products managed by others. In a meaningful sense, they are co-owners of the infrastructure.
For example, Boeing uses Hedera for an immutable audit trail that tracks aerospace parts through manufacturing and logistics. Having a seat on the council means Boeing can influence how its infrastructure evolves over time. FedEx joined in early 2026 to specifically address the digitalization of global logistics through on-chain data verification.
IBM brings enterprise blockchain expertise cultivated through years of work with Hyperledger. Google’s sheets validate the quality of the underlying infrastructure for other potential corporate hires on the sidelines.
How does Hedera consensus work in practice?
Hedera is not a blockchain. This is worth clarifying because the technical differences are directly related to how large companies develop based on them.
Most public networks use a chain of contiguous blocks, which creates a fundamental throughput upper limit. Hedera uses a directed acyclic graph (DAG) structure called a hashgraph, invented by Dr. Leemon Baird, co-founder and principal investigator of Hedera.
Gossip and virtual voting
The hashgraph consensus mechanism works by two interlocking ideas. First, let’s talk about rumors. All nodes not only share transaction data with their neighbors, but also information about what they have already heard from other nodes. This layered communication spreads exponentially throughout the network. The second is virtual voting. Once each node has a complete picture of recent network activity, it can calculate how other nodes will vote without sending additional messages. This eliminates a major source of network overhead.
As a practical result, Hedera consistently processes over 10,000 transactions per second (TPS) for its native token and consensus services, with finality resolved in approximately 3-5 seconds. By comparison, Bitcoin processes around 6-8 TPS and Ethereum’s base layer processes around 12-15 TPS.
What is aBFT? Why is it important?
The consensus mechanism achieves what is called asynchronous Byzantine fault tolerance (aBFT). This is a security term borrowed from distributed systems theory. It describes a network that can reach correct consensus even when some nodes are acting maliciously or are offline, and even when an attacker can control the timing of messages throughout the network.
Hedera’s aBFT claim was formally verified using Coq Proof Assistant, a formal computer-checked proof system. This makes sense because most of the mathematical proofs in cryptocurrencies are checked by humans rather than machines. Coq validation covers the algorithm itself and proves that hashgraph achieves the highest theoretical security standards available for distributed systems.
aBFT provides companies in financial services, healthcare, supply chain management, and more what the stochastic finality of traditional blockchains cannot provide: mathematical guarantees that once a transaction is recorded, it will continue to be recorded.
Hedera’s transaction fees are pegged at approximately $0.0001 per transfer, and are pegged to USD rather than currency. $HBAR price. This predictability, unlike other network volatile gas charges, is important for enterprise budgeting.
Is Hedera really decentralized?
Regular users cannot run consensus nodes. The node tier is permissioned and access is restricted to council members. Critics argue that a network controlled by more than 30 companies, however diverse, is not what decentralization means for most crypto communities.
Supporters counter that this trade-off is intentional. When a company like Standard Bank or Boeing operates a node, there is a designated regulator behind that infrastructure that can be held accountable. The rotating system of council seats (three-year terms, with a maximum of two consecutive terms, followed by a mandatory three-year waiting period before rejoining) ensures that no single organization becomes permanently entrenched.
On March 17, 2026, the SEC and CFTC jointly announced a five-category digital asset taxonomy; $HBAR As a digital product. This classification effectively determined that: $HBARThe value comes from the programmatic operation of the Protocol, not from the Council’s management efforts. For regulatory purposes, at least in the United States, this answers the question of centralization.
Hedera’s roadmap includes a transition to permissionless node operations in a later phase, but that transition has not yet been implemented.
What use cases are you actually running on Hedera today?
The composition of the council reflects where production deployments actually occur.
Supply chain and logistics are Boeing’s primary use cases, enabling traceability of the origin of immutable parts throughout aerospace manufacturing. FedEx joined in 2026 to build on-chain logistics validation on a global scale.
In financial services, Standard Bank, Shinhan Bank and SCB TechX use Hedera’s Token Service (HTS) for cross-border foreign exchange payments. Lloyds Banking Group, Aberdeen Investments and the UK’s FCA-regulated Archax exchange have completed the UK’s first institutional FX transaction using tokenized real-world assets as collateral to issue and transfer tokenized money market funds and UK gold coins on the Hedera network.
Carbon Markets and Sustainability uses Hedera’s Guardian framework to manage carbon credits on-chain. The DOVU Protocol has issued over $1.1 billion in soil carbon credits through this system.
As for the provenance of the AI data, NVIDIA joined Hedera in early 2026 through its HEAT developer program. ServiceNow is building AI governance workflows on its network. On March 27, 2026, Hedera launched AI Agent Lab, a no-code platform for building on-chain AI agents integrated with LangChain.
The network has processed over $10 billion in total real-world asset settlements.
where is it done $HBAR Do all of these apply to you?
$HBAR It is the native token of the Hedera network. This has two functions. It pays transaction fees on the network and acts as a security stake that underpins the proof-of-stake consensus layer.
As of June 2026, $HBAR It is trading around $0.079. It reached an all-time high of approximately $0.569 on September 16, 2021. The gap between the network’s institutional adoption story and the token price is something that analysts regularly focus on.
Since the launch of the mainnet, the total number of transactions on the network will exceed 70 billion by mid-2026. Canary Capital spots $HBAR The ETF, which listed on Nasdaq in October 2025 under the ticker HBR, had net inflows of $93.21 million as of the end of March 2026, absorbing approximately 1.3% of capital. $HBARCirculating supply of. 15 additional pieces $HBAR The ETF application is currently under review by the SEC.
Binance analysts predict the average $HBAR The price in 2026 is $0.218, about 2.2 times the current level. DigitalCoinPrice has a target of $0.25 for December 2026. CoinCodex has a more conservative view for the same period at around $0.14.
conclusion
The Hedera Council is a purposefully designed governance structure. It is a rotating group of globally recognized organizations, each running a node, holding an equal vote, and putting their reputation at risk in the event of a network failure. Google Sheets validates your infrastructure. Boeing’s use case demonstrates aerospace-scale supply chain deployment. IBM brings enterprise integration expertise. Accenture’s April 2026 addition signals the council’s expanded focus on enterprise AI governance. The hashgraph consensus mechanism underlying all of this provides aBFT security verified by formal mathematical proofs, over 10,000 TPS, and fixed fees of less than a few cents. Whether it is translated or not $HBAR Rising prices are another issue, but the operational infrastructure these organizations run is real and currently processes over 70 billion transactions.
- Hedera official website – What is Hashgraph Consensus? Rumors and Virtual Voting Explained
- hedera documentation – Hashgraph Consensus Algorithm: Security and Formal Proof of aBFT
- hedera council – About Hedera Council: Membership, Responsibility, and Governance Structure
- Hedera’s blog – Hedera Council Welcomes Accenture’s Advancement of Trusted Infrastructure for Enterprise AI (April 30, 2026)
- femex academy – What is Hedera? $HBAR?Enterprise Blockchain and Digital Commodities 2026
- CountDeFi – Hedera hash graph ($HBAR): Distributed Ledger Technology Explained
- leave x – Hedera Governance Council Description: Enterprise Governance for Public Networks
- exponential science – Hedera network governance model explained
- biget news – Ivy ($HBAR) Price Prediction: Why Google, Boeing, and IBM are on the Council
- Kucoin Blog – Hedera hash graph ($HBAR) Price prediction from 2026 to 2030
- coin row – Hedera Hashgraph Statistics 2026: Growth, Transactions, and Network Performance
- CoinGecko – Ivy ($HBAR) Current price, market cap, and historical data
