HBAR is the cryptocurrency linked to the public network Hedera. The cryptocurrency is used on the network to power dApps, peer-to-peer payments, business models and to protect the network from bad actors. The Hedera network is the only public ledger that utilizes the so-called Hashgraph consensus mechanism. The project claims that this consensus method is faster, more secure and efficient than traditional blockchain consensus mechanisms. The network is able to process 10.000 transactions per second. Currently the public ledger is stored on nodes which are run by members of the Hedera Governing Council. In the future however, Hedera will become completely permissionless and nodes can be run by whoever wishes to do so. Some of the members of the Council includes companies like Google, IBM and Boeing.