Hedera Hashgraph Goes Public as Governing Council Deploys Nodes | Leemon Baird & Mance Harmon

In Episode 100 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Hedera Hashgraph founders Leemon Baird and Mance Harmon about Open Access, now that the network has officially gone public. This is the go-to-episode for anyone looking to understand the public ledger and why Fortune 100 companies like IBM, Deutsche Telekom, Boeing, and others have joined Hedera's Governing Council.

As a seed investor in Hedera Hashgraph, Demetri’s involvement with the public ledger goes back to September 2017, when he first invited Leemon Baird onto Hidden Forces to discuss the Hashgraph Whitepaper. Weeks later, Demetri put on an event at the Assemblage NoMad where Mance Harmon joined a panel alongside two other members of the executive team. The panel explored the innovation of Hashgraph consensus, specifically virtual voting and gossip-about-gossip. On March 13th, 2018, Leemon and Mance announced the launch of Hedera Hashgraph at an event in New York City, and on August 1st, 2018, news of the ledger’s $6 Billion valuation was made public. Six months later, Hedera announced the initial group of Governing Council Members, and six months after this IBM, Tata Communications, FIS, and Boeing were announced as having joined Hedera’s Governing Council as well. Two years since Leemon Baird first appeared on Hidden Forces to share the news about Hashgraph, Hedera has finally gone public. Open Access also marks the beginning of Hedera’s strategic 15-year coin distribution, with HBAR tokens beginning to be released on exchanges in the US and Asia.

This recording is meant to be the go-to-episode for anyone looking to understand Hedera Hashgraph DLT and the functions of the Hedera Governing Council. Demetri also references a back-and-forth on Twitter between him, Hedera’s technical lead, and a number of Hedera skeptics resulting from a medium post by writer and blockchain enthusiast Eric Wall. Hedera’s technical lead, Paul Madsen, responded with his own posts. Demetri has encouraged anyone interested in learning more about Hedera Hashgraph to engage with the team through their Telegram channel, as well as on Twitter.

Relevant Timecodes:

00:11:53 Governing Council Announcements

00:14:08 Hedera Consensus Service with Hyperledger Foundation 

00:16:50 What is Finality?

00:18:57 Probabilistic Consensus: The Problem with Not Having Finality

00:20:25 Proof of Work Slows Us Down

00:21:51 How is This Possible?

00:28:57 Coq Proof

00:34:05 Theoretical Competitors to Hashgraph

00:35:59 Database Sharding

00:44:15 Proof-of-Stake vs. Proof-of-Work

00:49:39 Hedera Proxy Staking (POS)

00:50:58 Private vs. Public Networks /Permissioned vs. Permissionless Databases

00:52:35 Path to Decentralization

00:53:45 Market Capitalization & Network Security

00:56:16 Addressing Scams

00:58:47 Theoretical Attacks, Proxy Staking & HBARS

01:06:12 Network Fees

01:08:08 How Governance Works in Hedera

01:10:07 Governing Council: “Can’s” and “Can'ts"

01:17:19 Ownership of HBARS

01:19:21 Stability: Open Source vs. Open Review

01:27:29 Regulatory Approach: Squeaky Clean

01:31:32 Use Cases

You can access that rundown, along with a transcript to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers also gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily be added to your favorite podcast application. 

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://patreon.com/hiddenforces

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod