The diversified development of the Hedera ecosystem boosts HBAR market performance

Amid the overall volatility in the cryptocurrency market, Hedera's native token HBAR has shown a strong upward momentum. Since its low in 2024, the price of HBAR has increased by more than 6 times, reaching a year-to-date high of $0.29 in mid-July 2025. As of July 23, the price of HBAR is $0.271, with a fully diluted market cap of approximately $13.5 billion.

Several fundamental factors support this round of strong price increases, including traditional financial institutions utilizing the Hedera network for asset tokenization, multiple key upgrades to ensure the network's performance and scalability, and the continuous enrichment of the DeFi and tokenization ecosystem for physical assets. This article will analyze these key factors in depth and their potential impact on HBAR's future market.

The Favor of Institutional Investors and Traditional Financial Giants

Since the second half of 2024, the Hedera ecosystem has gained the attention of numerous institutional investors and traditional financial giants. In November 2024, a digital asset trading platform regulated by the UK's FCA launched tokens for money market funds issued by three globally renowned asset management companies. These tokens have gone live on the Hedera mainnet, allowing institutional investors to buy and sell traditional fixed-income products directly on Hedera's high-throughput network.

As we enter 2025, the surge of institutional participation continues. In February 2025, the Hedera Foundation announced an investment in the tokens of a certain international dollar currency fund issued by a specific platform, further strengthening Hedera's position in the realm of institutional-grade asset tokenization.

In mid-July, several community members discovered a batch of tokens corresponding to money market funds from various well-known asset management companies on the Hedera mainnet. These tokens were mostly created by third parties on the network and have yet to receive official confirmation from any institution. The industry generally believes that these "new tokens" are more of market speculation regarding potential products and are still in the rumor stage.

On-chain data shows that large holders continue to be bullish on HBAR. According to statistics from analysis firms, the number of whales holding large amounts of HBAR has been steadily increasing since October 2024, with wallets holding tens of millions also showing an increasingly firm accumulation trend. This indicates that large investors maintain confidence in the long-term prospects of HBAR, providing liquidity support for the market.

Periodic Technical Iteration and Protocol Upgrade

To accommodate the growing application demands, the Hedera network continues to enhance its performance and functionality through periodic upgrades. For example, on June 25, 2025, Hedera completed the v0.62 mainnet upgrade, and on July 23, it upgraded to version v0.63. These upgrades focus on system core and operational improvements, without changing the core economic model of HBAR.

Taking v0.63 from July as an example, this version added enterprise-level features: system commands support non-zero shard IDs and domain IDs, added a fee configuration throttling mechanism, and optimized the MerkleDB storage system. These improvements aim to enhance the resilience and throughput of the network, providing technical support for large-scale commercial deployments. Meanwhile, Hedera released tools and SDK updates, enabling developers to deploy applications in a richer network topology.

In addition, Hedera donated all protocol and server-side source code to the Linux Foundation project Hiero in September 2024, achieving full-chain open-source governance from consensus nodes to SDK and service layers. This initiative significantly enhanced the project's transparency and community participation.

Overall, Hedera's technological iterations follow the roadmap of "rapid iteration and continuous optimization." Each upgrade aims to enhance the network's capacity and continually improve the features available to developers. These stable and gradual technological advancements provide a foundational guarantee for the implementation of ecological applications and value conversion, creating supportive conditions for the actual demand of HBAR.

Governance Structure and Ecological Support

In May 2025, the Hedera ecosystem welcomed an important organizational restructuring and brand update: the HBAR Foundation was officially renamed the Hedera Foundation, and the Hedera Management Committee was renamed the Hedera Council, with both operating independently under the new brand. This transformation aims to provide a clearer understanding of organizational functions for all parties and unify the "Hedera" brand.

The Hedera Council is composed of over thirty leading organizations from around the world, covering multiple industries including technology, aviation, telecommunications, and finance, ensuring diversity and balance in network governance. Council members enjoy equal voting rights, term limits, and an open nomination process, ensuring that no one can monopolize decision-making. This multi-industry, cross-regional governance model provides a solid guarantee for the security, stability, and compliance of the Hedera network.

According to the official statement, the new CEO of the Hedera Foundation will focus on promoting DeFi and community innovation, while continuing to support institutional adoption and tokenization development. The foundation has clearly prioritized the DeFi ecosystem as a key development direction—more ecosystem integration projects and DeFi tools will be launched in 2025 to help developers and users manage digital assets more easily. At the same time, the Hedera Council continues to focus on network security and compliance governance under the leadership of the new chairman, ensuring the robustness and decentralization of the network.

This governance reform helps to better support ecological development. The foundation provides funding and resources to developers through specialized funds segmented into different areas such as fintech, security, and sustainability. The council brings together over a hundred leading global institutions to continuously upgrade the network and formulate policies. This integrated brand strategy of Hedera, along with the new positioning of its leadership, makes ecological construction more systematic, supporting the incubation of new projects and providing institutional guarantees for long-term ecological development.

Stablecoins, Tokenization of Real Assets, and Consumption Applications Drive Continuous Growth

Alongside the adoption by institutions and technological upgrades, the DeFi and application scenarios of the Hedera ecosystem have also seen significant expansion in recent years. According to data, the transaction volume on the Hedera chain reached approximately $4.66 billion in December 2024. Although it subsequently adjusted with the market downturn, this marks that the ecosystem's liquidity has entered the multi-billion dollar level.

The main exchange application on the Hedera chain is a decentralized exchange based on the HBAR network. As of July 23, data statistics show that the trading volume of this exchange exceeded $284 million in the recent 30 days, with a trading volume of $120 million in the past 7 days. In addition, there are various DeFi tools and services in the Hedera ecosystem that provide users with functions such as exchanging and lending.

The application of stablecoins and tokenization of real assets is also an important aspect of the expansion of the Hedera ecosystem. Thanks to the launch of relevant tools, financial institutions find it easier to issue stablecoins on Hedera. So far, several banks have launched stablecoins such as the US dollar on Hedera. By mid-2025, the total amount of stablecoins locked on the Hedera network is expected to be around $212.5 million, primarily consisting of USDC.

In the field of physical assets, Hedera has also emerged with some impressive cases. Representative projects include real estate asset tokenization platforms and carbon credit platforms, which have tokenized a large number of real estate assets and carbon credits on Hedera, respectively. The Hedera network's high TPS and low fees make it suitable for large-scale asset on-chain and settlement, while its "native eco-friendliness" feature aligns well with the demands of the carbon market.

In addition, the Hedera Foundation announced the launch of the "Hedera To Earn" reward ecosystem in mid-July, unifying multiple large applications into the same Web3 token economy. Users can earn tokens by completing tasks, participating in content creation, and engaging in virtual activities, achieving cross-platform liquidity and incentives. The project aims to quickly catalyze on-chain activity and application innovation for Hedera based on the existing large user base.

In summary, Hedera has attracted multiple mainstream asset management institutions to pilot asset tokenization over the past year, relying on its high-throughput network and transparent governance. Through a series of robust protocol upgrades and open-source initiatives, it has continuously improved network performance and developer experience. Additionally, it has formed a complementary ecosystem across various fields such as DeFi, stablecoins, tokenization of physical assets, and consumer applications. Numerous key factors have accumulated the actual demand for HBAR, providing support for its price performance.

Looking to the future, with more financial institutions and consumer-level applications being implemented, as well as further verification of on-chain activity and user retention data, whether Hedera can consolidate its positioning as an "enterprise-level public chain" and its continuous impact on HBAR prices remains a key point to watch in the coming period.