Hedera Governing Council

The Hedera Governing Council consists of up to 39 term-limited and highly diversified organizations and enterprises, reflecting up to 11 unique industries, academia, and non-profits globally. Council members are committed to governing software changes, while bringing stability and continued decentralization to the public network.

Request to join

Hedera is owned and governed by the world's leading organizations

"We believe Hedera could help provide an interesting way to enhance and simplify the deployment of Hyperledger Fabric in the enterprise, making it easier for groups to build and grow their networks."

Jerry Cuomo
Vice President of Blockchain Technologies

A truly decentralized governance model

DIRECTION OF CODEBASE

Members of the Hedera Governing Council share an equal vote in the direction of software for thousands of public nodes, and the Hedera platform’s codebase.

NO FORKING

As the hashgraph consensus algorithm is proprietary with open review code, the network and its cryptocurrency have a no-fork guarantee. This ensures stability of development for application builders, and long-term confidence in the network.

INITIAL NETWORK NODES

At scale, we anticipate thousands of public nodes joining to support the network's decentralized consensus and growth. Council members will set up and maintain the initial set of nodes on the Hedera public network, after testing has completed.

TERM LIMITS & EQUAL VOTE

All members have a 3-year maximum term, with up to 2 consecutive terms, and an equal vote on network and platform decisions. Swirlds, the creator of the hashgraph algorithm, has a permanent seat and equal vote. After initial members are selected by Swirlds, the council’s Membership Commitee sources replacements.

"As we work to bring these kinds of technologies to our clients, we are pleased to join the Hedera Governing Council as an inaugural governing member, to help further shape the adoption of DLT across organizations and governments globally."

Scott Thiel
Partner

Long-term stability and decentralization

The Hedera network addresses decentralization concerns by separating governance from consensus. The governance model is based on the original model used by National BankAmericard Inc., founded in 1968, and later renamed VISA. It is designed in a way that ensures the governing council can be trusted to do what’s in the best interest of the Hedera network, that no single company has control, and that the Hedera Governing Council cannot be unduly influenced by individual members or node operators.

“Hedera has created a public distributed ledger and governing council that will ensure long-term stability, distributed governance, and security. We are thrilled to be an initial governing member of the Hedera Governing Council, to help shepherd this important technology as it is adopted by the market.”

John Calian
Senior Vice President

Critical decisions. Decentralized vote.

The most critical decisions for the Hedera platform and public network require unanimous council support. Decisions made by the council include, but are not limited to:

Direction of platform and public network node codebase features and functions
Treasury management to ensure overall network safety
Controlled mutability to address legal and data compliance
Legal network requirements to serve global markets

Transparent governance

These documents are shared to provide further details of the Council and track the evolution of its operations and membership. PDFs are hashed and timestamped using Hedera Consensus Service with the Hedera-owned account ID 0.0.44599. Learn how to verify files on Hedera.com here.

Council overview

This two-pager highlights the benefits of joining the Council, its configuration, and the responsibilities of its members.

HCS Txn Info

Read Verify on explorers

LLC Agreement

The Limited Liability Company Agreement defines the Council's rights and responsibilities.

HCS Txn Info

Read Verify on explorers

Meeting minutes

These minutes are typically approved and posted within 30 days from the subsequent quarterly Council meeting.

Read

Node requirements

Understand a Council member's technical requirements and example configurations of a Hedera mainnet consensus node.