Hedera Foundation and Council rebrand with new leadership, strategic changes to focus on AI and DeFi solutions
Hedera Overview - May 9, 2025
Welcome back to the Hedera Overview. We’re providing biweekly content for Hedera enthusiasts, users, developers and curious-minded web3 users so they can stay up to date on the ecosystem.
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The ecosystem insights
HBAR token price: $0.20 (+1.06%)
Market cap: $8.41B (+4.73%)
Total value locked (TVL): $94.36M (+3.51%)
Stablecoin market cap: $131.8M (+15.87%)
Total staked: 16.23M (+0.43%)
Transactions per second: 8.83 tx/s (+3.64%)
The percentages and metrics are calculated from its change over a 14-day time frame, unless noted otherwise.
Hedera Highlights
Diving deeper into some of the biggest updates from Hedera.
#️⃣ What’s happening: Hedera announced strategic changes and rebrand of both The HBAR Foundation and The Hedera Governing Council.
#️⃣ Why it matters: The rebranding of The HBAR Foundation as the Hedera Foundation and the Hedera Governing Council as the Hedera Council is a part of its continued efforts to grow the ecosystem.
The Hedera Council and Hedera Foundation state that they will operate independently, but plan to perform in coordination with each other within the ecosystem. The Hedera Council is a governing body of 30 organizations dedicated to ensuring the network’s security, integrity and decentralized governance. It focuses on enterprise adoption, public policy influence, and transparent stewardship.
On the other hand, the Hedera Foundation is designed to drive community-driven innovation and institutional adoption. It plans to prioritize tokenization, DeFi, AI and digital identity solutions to empower developers and enterprises. In turn, the foundation can deliver accessible tools and partnerships that build a robust digital economy.
Charles Adkins, CEO of Hedera Foundation, will continue in his position. Separately, The Hedera Council will be led by Tom Sylvester, who was made President. Mance Harmon, co-founder of Hedera and chairman of Hashgraph, was elected chairman of Hedera Council for a two-year term starting in July.
The Hedera Council and Hedera Foundation rebrand and leadership change can fuel its ecosystem growth by leveraging their specialized strengths. The council’s focus on governance and enterprise adoption could attract large organizations that enhance the network’s credibility and expand use cases in industries like DeFi or TradFi. Meanwhile, the foundation’s emphasis on DeFi, AI and tokenization would be able to foster a stronger developer community to drive grassroots adoption.
The two collaborating with a focus on Hedera creates a synergistic effect, enabling more integration of enterprise solutions and community-driven projects. This dual approach aims to broaden the ecosystem’s reach, while fostering innovation across diverse sectors.
#️⃣ The bigger picture: The foundation and council hopes to create a more unified ecosystem that can help the new leadership reach their shared goals. As the network evolves, it may find it needs specific focuses on specific sectors such as enterprise solutions, community empowerment or technological development.
This division looks to optimize resources, reduce bottlenecks and allow the two to scale independently. In turn, both entities would be equally contributive to the network’s overall growth, creating a flexible and resilient ecosystem.
Unpacking the hash
Unique active wallets in the last 30 days on the Hedera network rose 40.5% to 19.56K, according to DappRadar data
Learn about the Hiero Improvement Proposal-991 and its design to improve economic scalability, enhance resource allocation and revenue distribution mechanisms for users
USDC issued on Hedera is up more than 60% in the last month to $131.6M (shown below)
This coincides with the network hitting an all-time high in stablecoin market cap of $131.8M, which is 99.8% denominated by USDC, DefiLlama data shows
Source: USDC.cool
Ecosystem hieros
Highlighting the companies, communities and users tied to Hedera ecosystem
Learn how Neuron’s latest upgrade can allow AI agents to discover, access and pay for data using USDC on the Hedera network
Bonzo Finance TVL is up 42% on the month to $32.2M, DefiLlama data shows
Hedera hosted an X livestream with Hashgraph DevRel and Hedera Foundation Director of Ecosystem to showcase web3 gaming capabilities on the network
Get involved with the community
Want to dive into the ecosystem full-time? Find the latest job postings here or get involved at an event below.
The Hedera Foundation and Hgraph team will be at Consensus 2025 in Toronto from May 14-16 - see details about who will be speaking and check out its booth (2609)
Applications for the Hedera Moderators Program are open until May 16
Set reminders for Hedera AI Agents Hackathon demo day to explore the Hedera AI ecosystem - live streamed on X and YouTube from May 20-21
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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.