Hedera Hashgraph’s Mainnet Open Beta Now Live

Enterprise-grade distributed ledger platform Hedera Hashgraph has launched its blockchain-like public network mainnet beta, the company announced in a blog post on 16 September.

According to the blog post, the open access to the mainnet beta will allow anyone to create an account, and new developers to create decentralized applications for the network, which already has 26 dapps live thanks to the hundreds of developers who have been building on it over the last few months during its closed beta. Dr. Leemon Baird, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at Hedera Hashgraph, said:

“Today, we welcome developers globally to build decentralized applications on our platform, and are excited to see what they will build. With Open Access, our council members have also begun running nodes, marking the next step in our journey to become the industry’s most decentralized public network.”

Some of the company’s governing council members include firms such as technology behemoth IBM, aircraft giant Boeing, Indian telecom Tata Communications, Japanese financial holding company Nomura Holdings, financial services firm FIS Global, each of which will run their own node and have a vote on future software updates.

The launch of the public network also means that the platform’s native HBAR token is also set to be distributed from its treasury. Investors who participated in the tokens’s crowdsale, through which the company gathered $124 million between March and August 2018, will receive more than 379 million tokens. Advisors, vendors, and other participants will receive another 1.95 million, while the 50 billion supply is set to be released over the next 15 years.

The company believes that its hashgraph technology will help enhance the distributed ledger technology and micropayments. It will also support smart contracts and allow private networks to connect to public ones, leveraging all the benefits from their particular transaction ordering mechanism. Hedera reports that at launch they will support up to 10,000 transactions per second. File services will be performed at 10 transactions per second.

According to Hedera’s website, 14 cryptocurrency exchanges and over-the-counter desks have already stated their intent to list the HBAR token around the launch of the platform’s mainnet.