Hedera HBAR Enters New Era With Focus on AI, DeFi, and Institutional Asset Tokenization AllinCrypto May 8, 2025
The Hedera ecosystem has ushered in a new era, altering its branding to a striking blue and introducing new goals and priorities for the ecosystem moving forward.
In a May 8 post, Hedera announced that under Charles Adkins, CEO of the now renamed Hedera Foundation, growth in DeFi, AI, and institutional tokenization will be given a greater focus.
The foundation will also focus on “grass-root” support for builders while attracting talent and innovators from outside of the HBAR ecosystem as part of a refined strategy.
HBAR enters new era with enhanced focus on DeFi, AI, and tokenization
As part of the Hedera Foundation’s new strategy, decentralized finance will become one of HBAR’s core priorities alongside community growth and empowerment.
Artificial intelligence, DeFi, and institutional tokenizations will be a focus for the network under the Foundation led by Charles Adkins, who has had previous experiences at Polygon and Aptos (APT).
In a new press release, it seems the Hedera Foundation will be pushing big time on decentralized finance and onchain growth, onboarding new developers and initiating ways to support the wider community.
For the Hedera Council, Tom Sylvester will lead initiatives to strengthen decentralized governance and encourage enterprise adoption of Hedera with transparency and diligence.
At the Hedera Council, Mance Harmon, co-founder of Hedera and Hashgraph, has been elected Chair of the Hedera Council, coming into effect from July 2025. Harmon will help drive Hedera’s new era in the right direction.
As Chair, Mance will steer high-level strategic alignment, empowering Council members to actively build solutions on the network, and supporting the Council’s stewardship of the next phase of the Hedera network.
From the get-go, the Hedera community is able to identify Hedera’s new branding with blues and blacks being mixed together. On X/Twitter, the Hedera Foundation changed its profile picture to the Hedera logo against a blue eye-catching background.
A new website has been created and launched specifically for the Hedera Council, allowing newcomers and experienced Hedera ecosystem users to see what the Council is all about and who they’re in partnership with.
Many HBAR community members may have seen Hedera’s rebranding on the horizon. Since late 2024, the Hedera Foundation announced that a greater push into DeFi growth and developer support was needed.
Hedera DeFi reached new all-time highs in Q4 2024: Can it be repeated?
In Q4 2024, DeFi on Hedera boomed with $10.7 million in exchange volume a day, a new all-time high for the network.
SaucerSwap exchange, Karate Combat, and Bonzo Finance contributed greatly to Hedera’s DeFi ecosystem growth, with Hedera’s circulating market cap rising by 375% quarter on quarter, from $2.2B to $10B+.
This new era for Hedera will be very interesting. Later in 2025, Hashgraph is due to launch HashSpehre, a permissioned network designed for institutional players to create stablecoins, make cross-border transactions, and more.
HashSphere may introduce dozens of institutional investors to the Hedera ecosystem, which in turn may lead them to HBAR, where investors currently reside.
Hedera x EQTY Labs Verifiable Compute is also due to launch in 2025, bringing a collaboration between Nvidia, Intel, and Hedera to fruition in AI developments.
As you can see, there’s a lot to look forward to for Hedera in 2025, and it’s normal for investors to expect heightened price action from the HBAR token going forward. In the long term, continuation is expected.
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