Hedera Hashgraph
Hedera Hashgraph Technical Briefing
Published June 8, 2021
Supported by Costanoa Ventures and IowaEDA
Overview
Hedera Hashgraph walks through the Hedera public distributed ledger — a leaderless consensus network with thousands of TPS, 3–5 second latency at full finality, native multi-signature, and fees pegged to the US dollar for predictable business economics. The briefing demos the Hedera Token Service (HTS), which issues fungible and non-fungible tokens as native network operations (not smart contracts), with configurable keys for admin / supply / KYC / wipe / freeze so issuers can layer in compliance features selectively. The live demo creates a VSAN6 fungible token (two decimals, variable supply, KYC-gated), walks through token association (recipients must opt in — protecting users from unsolicited airdrops and the tax liability they can trigger in some jurisdictions), grants KYC to Alice and Bob, transfers 20,000 tokens to Alice, and closes with an atomic swap across three assets (VSAN6, demo-token-one, and HBAR) in a single Hedera transaction.
0:00 Introduction to Hedera Hashgraph
Hedera Hashgraph introduces itself as a public distributed ledger with thousands of TPS, 3–5 second latency with 100% finality, leaderless consensus, USD-pegged fees, and native multi-signature — a different trade-off space from typical blockchain L1s.
1:00 HBAR micropayments and the crypto service
HBAR is Hedera's native coin. Fees are low enough to economically transfer a fraction of a cent, genuinely enabling micropayment use cases that most chains struggle with.
1:30 Hedera Token Service — native, not smart-contract
The Hedera Token Service (HTS) issues fungible and non-fungible tokens as native network operations — no smart contracts, as fast and cheap as HBAR itself — opening up token issuance use cases not seen on other chains.
2:00 Other Hedera services
Hedera's other services: Hedera Consensus Service exposes the underlying hashgraph consensus as an API for any app; scheduled transactions simplify multi-signature coordination; and EVM-compatible smart contracts plus mutable file storage round out the stack.
3:00 Create a fungible token via the token composer
Demo of Hedera's token composer UI: create a new fungible token (VSAN6), two decimals (dollar-like), variable supply starting at 500 whole tokens, with 3–5 second finality and no block confirmations required.
4:30 Mutable, KYC-gated, wipeable, freezable
Optional token controls: admin-key mutability, KYC key gating (mark which accounts have passed off-chain KYC), wipe key for reclaiming tokens from malicious holders, freeze key for temporarily blocking an account. Each control is its own key, enabling threshold-key governance.
7:30 Token association — opt-in receivers
Before an account can hold a token, it must associate with it. This protects high-profile users from unwanted airdrops showing up in their account (and from potential tax liability on those airdrops in some jurisdictions).
9:00 KYC grant and live transfers
The issuer grants Alice and Bob KYC (required because VSAN6 is KYC-gated), then transfers 20,000 tokens to Alice in a single transaction that settles in seconds with full finality.
10:00 Atomic swap across three assets
Alice atomically swaps 100 of demo-token-one for 10,000 VSAN6 and 5 HBAR with Bob — three asset movements in a single atomic transaction. Any insufficient balance would cause the whole thing to fail.
Presented by Greg Scullard and Lina Tran — Hedera Hashgraph · website
Topics: Blockchain & DLT, Developer Tools
