Hiero Turns One: Graduation and Growth

One year ago, on September 16th, 2024, Hedera contributed its entire codebase to Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust (LFDT). That donation created Hiero, the first public blockchain codebase contributed to an independent foundation. This marked a turning point for Hedera, and reinforced the belief that trust must be built in the open, not behind closed doors. It also underscored a commitment to code neutrality: the principle that no single company controls the rules. Neutral code is the foundation of lasting trust as it’s open, transparent, and resilient enough to outlive any single actor.

Since then, Hiero has grown into a thriving community-led project. Under LFDT’s neutral governance, it has become the foundation for innovation across identity, payments, supply chains, and beyond. And now, as Hiero celebrates its first birthday, it has also achieved graduated status. Graduation is LFDT’s highest recognition of maturity, reserved for projects with proven governance, adoption, and sustainability. This makes Hiero the first project to graduate under LFDT’s new lifecycle framework, and the first to do so since LFDT expanded its umbrella of projects.

A Year of Growth

Hiero’s first year has been about momentum: nearly 800 contributors from more than 80 organizations have joined the effort, with 50+ adopters already building real-world solutions on top of the project. Open elections also expanded the Technical Steering Committee (TSC), adding new leaders from across the community.

The project stands on solid engineering ground. With 28 repositories licensed under Apache 2.0 and MIT, robust CI/CD pipelines, OpenSSF Scorecard compliance, and transparent governance, Hiero has proven its enterprise readiness. It has also partnered with the OpenWallet Foundation and Hyperledger AnonCreds to deliver tools for decentralized identity, including a Python SDK and a Hedera ACA-Py plugin.

Hiero’s impact has reached the global stage. From LFDT webinars to the Global Digital Collaboration Conference in Geneva, it has showcased how open-source trust frameworks can power cross-border payments, verifiable credentials, and other solutions that matter.

Why Graduation Matters

Graduation is more than a milestone. It shows that Hiero has met LFDT’s highest standards of governance, technical maturity, documentation, and community participation. It means Hiero is stable, production-ready, and widely adopted.

Hedera has already made the leap. Since February of this year, the Hedera mainnet has been powered entirely by Hiero’s open codebase, making Hedera the largest public network running on an LFDT project. In practice, this shift has delivered real impact: cutting cross-border payment costs from $40 to just $0.10, and reducing settlement times from a week to less than a minute. In supply chains, Hiero is eliminating mismatched data and removing single points of control, proving its capacity to boost efficiency and improve performance

Graduation also means accountability. Hiero remains under LFDT’s Technical Advisory Council, which will continue to oversee its progress and ensure the community keeps raising the bar.

Looking Ahead

One year in, Hiero proves that when governance is open and contributions are welcomed from all corners, innovation accelerates. Hundreds of developers, dozens of enterprises, and entire ecosystems are now building on Hiero. The foundation is strong, and the community is only just getting started

The next phase is about scale: from digital identity pilots to enterprise finance, from sustainability tracking to global trade platforms. Developers are already building SDKs, APIs, and libraries that make trust verifiable at every layer.

Join the Journey

Thanks to all those who contributed, built, and shared their ideas. This may be an industry first, but it is definitely not the end. At Hedera, it is believed that trust should never be assumed, it should be verifiable. With Hiero’s graduation, that vision is no longer just an idea. It is here today: open source, and ready to scale.

Now is the time to get involved. Explore Hiero on github. Start building. Join the LFDT community. Together, we can shape the next generation of decentralized trust.

Visit hiero.org to get involved today.

Further Resources

• Get Involved with Hiero
• Hiero GitHub Organization

Hiero Turns One: Graduation and Growth was originally published in Hedera Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.