Governance of Hedera: The Council Model and Institutional Backing

/Nov 4, 2025

Key Takeaways

• Hedera's governance model features a diverse council of up to 39 organizations ensuring accountability and operational resilience.

• The Hedera Improvement Proposals (HIPs) process allows for community involvement while maintaining a clear path for decision-making.

• Institutional participation from major companies like Google Cloud and Dell Technologies enhances credibility and trust in the network.

• Key considerations for enterprises include clarity of authority, transparency of proposals, and defined incident response procedures.

The way a public network is governed is as consequential as its speed or fees. In 2025, as institutions move from pilots to production tokenization and as regulations like the EU’s MiCA roll into effect, builders and treasurers are asking a sharper question: Who is responsible for change management, upgrades, and risk decisions on the networks we depend on? Hedera’s council-led governance offers a distinct answer.

Why governance matters now

Regulatory clarity is arriving. Europe’s Markets in Crypto-Assets framework starts phasing in comprehensive rules for stablecoins, disclosures, and service providers, which heightens expectations around operational resilience and accountability. See the official overview of MiCA from the European Commission for details.
Institutional tokenization is scaling from experiments to services. Programmes like the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Project Guardian continue to explore real-world asset tokenization and interoperable settlement, underscoring the need for networks with predictable fees and credible governance. Learn more at MAS’s Project Guardian page.
Enterprises must evidence due diligence. Beyond throughput and finality, risk teams look for defined upgrade procedures, transparent voting, and a clear escalation path when incidents occur.

Hedera’s governance targets these requirements with a council of globally recognized organizations and an on-chain/off-chain process for change proposals.

The Hedera Governing Council, in brief

Hedera is stewarded by a Governing Council of up to 39 organizations spanning sectors and regions. Members are term-limited, hold equal voting rights, and collectively make decisions on network parameters, treasury management, and key strategic directions. The live roster and structure are maintained on the official Council page.

Key characteristics:

Diverse, rotating membership to limit capture by any single entity
Transparent voting and meeting artifacts for major changes
Committees and working groups for technical, legal, and treasury matters
Operational responsibility for running permissioned validator nodes

For a deeper technical description of how governance fits into the network, see Hedera’s documentation on network governance.

In 2022, stewardship of the hashgraph intellectual property moved from Swirlds to the Council, aligning governance with the core protocol’s evolution. Hedera’s announcement details the transfer of IP stewardship.

How decisions actually get made: the HIP process

Hedera’s change process is centered on Hedera Improvement Proposals (HIPs), publicly tracked on GitHub. Anyone can author or discuss a HIP, while acceptance requires Council-level review and voting for material changes. This mirrors the open proposal patterns of other networks while preserving a clear escalation and approval path for production upgrades. Explore the HIP repository on GitHub.

For network operations, availability and incident communications are published on Hedera’s status page. Network state and governance activity can be independently verified via explorers like HashScan.

Institutional backing, put to the test

The Council model is designed to marry public-permissioned consensus with institutional-grade accountability. Membership has included global names across cloud, telecom, finance, manufacturing, and gaming, with organizations publicly announcing participation. For example:

Google Cloud described its role and rationale when it joined the Governing Council on the Google Cloud blog.
Dell Technologies’ participation was announced with an emphasis on distributed data and edge use cases on Hedera’s blog.
Ubisoft shared its initiative to explore gamer-centric applications and join the Council, as covered in Hedera’s announcement.

This institutional footprint is complemented by ecosystem catalysts such as the Hedera Guardian toolkit for ESG and MRV (measurement, reporting, and verification), which has been adopted by sustainability projects that need verifiable, auditable workflows. Read more on the Hedera Guardian page.

Stablecoin availability also reflects enterprise readiness. USDC is natively available on Hedera, which provides interoperability with traditional finance rails and compliance tooling. See Circle’s USDC on Hedera overview.

Strengths and trade-offs of the Council model

What you gain:

Predictable governance and upgrade cadence suitable for regulated workflows
Clear accountability when things break, plus a defined incident response path
Diversity of member expertise across legal, compliance, and infrastructure

What you give up:

Validators are permissioned and operated by Council members today, which some consider a narrower set of economic stakeholders than fully permissionless validator sets
Political decentralization progresses on a roadmap rather than occurring by default

Hedera publishes governance materials and tracks proposals in public, which helps external reviewers assess how decentralization evolves over time. See the Council page and the HIP repository for ongoing changes.

Builder takeaways: when Hedera governance is a fit

Hedera’s governance and network characteristics tend to align with:

Real-world asset tokenization that must meet audit and reporting standards
ESG and supply chain applications requiring attestations and immutable MRV
Payment and settlement flows that benefit from predictable fees and quick finality
Enterprise proof-of-concept graduates that need a clear change management process

If your institution is evaluating networks for production-grade deployment, compare governance along these dimensions:

Clarity of authority: Is there a named body with the power—and obligation—to act during incidents?
Transparency: Are proposals and votes visible and archived?
Upgrade risk: How are breaking changes introduced, and how are stakeholders notified?
Operational metrics: Is there a canonical, real-time status and incident history?

Authoritative references to check during diligence:

Hedera Governing Council structure and members
Live network health on the status page
Open proposal flow in the HIP repository
Regulatory context like MiCA and institutional pilots such as MAS Project Guardian

What users and treasurers should do regardless of governance

No governance model substitutes for sound key management. Whether you interact with Hedera directly or manage multi-chain portfolios that integrate with Hedera-based applications and services:

Maintain cold storage for treasury funds and operational wallets
Separate spending, custody, and governance keys
Document and rehearse incident runbooks for signing infrastructure and recovery

A hardware wallet helps enforce these controls by isolating private keys from internet-connected devices. OneKey focuses on open-source firmware, transparent design, and defense-in-depth to reduce single points of failure in key management—useful whether you’re safeguarding HBAR, stablecoins used alongside Hedera applications, or broader multi-chain assets across your stack.

Closing thoughts

Hedera’s Council model offers a pragmatic stance for enterprises that need credible stewards, transparent decisions, and consistent operations on a public network. As institutional tokenization and regulatory clarity accelerate, the projects that will ship and scale are likely to prioritize governance as much as gas costs. If your 2025 roadmap depends on public infrastructure, put governance under the same microscope you use for performance and security—and keep your keys in hardened, reviewable tooling to match.

References and further reading: