Why is Hedera Network Run By a Council Of Organizations Instead Of a Typical Crypto Community? Hedera (@hedera) takes a different approach to blockchain governance. Instead of leaving decisions to token holders or anonymous validators, Hedera is governed by the Hedera Council, formerly called the Governing Council. The Council has 34 member organizations from 13 industries. They include companies, universities, and a nonprofit consortium. (1) The Council votes on network technology, pricing, security, and how the HBAR treasury is used. Changing the 50 billion HBAR total supply needs the unanimous consent of the members. (2) Every member has an equal vote. A Council seat is not bought with HBAR, and votes do not scale with company size. (3) The stated goals are stability and making sure no single entity controls decisions. Members serve up to two consecutive three-year terms. (4) Only Council members run Hedera's consensus nodes today, and the network is still permissioned. HBAR holders can stake to a node to add weight to its consensus role, but that does not give them a governance vote. (5) Members include Google, IBM, Dell, Deutsche Telekom, and, more recently, FedEx, McLaren Racing, and Accenture. The code is open source under Project Hiero, and community proposals (HIPs) are reviewed by the Council first. Hedera gives up much of the token-holder governance seen on other networks in exchange for a structured, institution-led model with named node operators.