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- Hedera represents what the next phase of DeFi looks like: accessible to the many, reliable, and built to handle both users and institutions.
- In a recent report, the Hedera Foundation explained that with Hedera, transfer costs are as low as $0.001 with instant finalization.
Decentralized finance (DeFi) has promised to democratize access to financial services, but the reality has been less than seamless. Users often face sky-high gas fees, painfully slow transaction times, and confusing onboarding processes.
For institutions, the problems run even deeper: compliance concerns, unpredictable network costs, and questions about security and scalability have kept many large players on the sidelines. Despite its potential, DeFi has struggled to balance accessibility for individuals with the reliability and governance that corporations demand.
Recently, the Hedera Foundation published a report titled “Why Hedera DeFi is Built for Everyone”. According to our analysis, this is a blueprint of what Hedera offers that other networks cannot.
How Hedera Provides the DeFi Balance
When Hedera was founded by Dr. Leemon Baird, the inventor of the hashgraph consensus algorithm, and Mance Harmon, a seasoned technology executive, in 2018, they designed something fundamentally different. The Hedera Foundation paints a scenario:
Imagine sending $10 to a family member overseas and paying less than the cost of a text message. With Hedera’s fixed fees, even the smallest payments make sense. Think of paying a few cents for a Substack article or subscribing to a service by the minute.
These same features extend to large institutions. Hedera enables banks, fintechs, and DeFi protocols to move value faster and cheaper than traditional systems, with instant finality and growing support from multi-chain projects like KAIO, a protocol built to tokenize real-world assets (RWAs), Swarm, and ICHI.
The Hashgraph Consensus is a key part of this equal efficiency. With throughput in the tens of thousands of TPS, Hashgraph’s consensus mechanism ensures that transactions are finalized in strict arrival order. A consensus timestamp is applied to every transaction.
This helps prevent manipulation and stops others from jumping ahead in the queue, thus removing MEV risks.
They added, “The economic model that makes this technology accessible to all of DeFi matters just as much.” Most blockchains have unpredictable gas fees that spike with demand, making even simple transactions costly and inconsistent, not Hedera.
The network has fixed, dollar-denominated fees that are usually around $0.001 per transfer or swap. Hence, the costs stay low and predictable, regardless of network congestion or the size of the transaction being made. Even with slightly higher charges for tasks like account creation, the model will allow both individuals and businesses to budget with confidence.
For developers, there are built-in tools that remove the need for costly, complex development from the ground up. Hedera Token Service (HTS) makes sure that projects can issue tokens directly on the network without writing custom smart contracts, while EVM compatibility ensures existing DeFi apps run smoothly.
The Hedera Consensus Service (HCS) then supports off-chain coordination, and features like treasury management and multi-signature accounts are available natively.
All of these services are tied together by HBAR, Hedera’s native token. HBAR is what keeps steady demand flowing across every corner of the network. HBAR has been gaining traction. Grayscale Investments filed for a Hedera Trust ETF, and Canary Capital followed with its own proposal, which is now under SEC review.
Meanwhile, HBAR’s price action has been showing signs of strength. In the past 24 hours, the token climbed from a daily low of $0.23 to around $0.243, marking a 0.63% gain. On the weekly chart, HBAR is up 1.27%, and if this continues, analysts say a breakout could push the token toward $0.37.
