Why Hashgraph over Blockchain?

While blockchain based currencies and tokens get most of the attention, alternative distributed ledger technology is quietly making headway, most importantly Hashgraph. Developed by Leeman Baird in 2016, proponents boast that Hashgraph is able to offer much smaller fees, no mining, faster transaction times, and more security, although one drawback is that it is not open source. Some have called Hashgraph the next iteration of blockchain, with some companies, such as the healthcare focused Intiva Health, already making use of it’s advantages.

These improvements stem from the fundamentals of concensus. On one hand, blockchains function based on a concept called proof of work (POW), which means that adding blocks to the blockchain is intentionally computationally rigorous. This ensures that when a dispute arises, the system naturally defaults to the chain with the most work put into it, which by default must be the actual blockchain. For example, if someone tries to add a fraudulent block, there is no way he/she could match the work put into a real block, as the computational power for real blocks are provided by the entire community. In this way, the community arrives at a consensus, guaranteeing a verified ledger.

On the other hand, Hashgraph has done away with POW and replaced it with two concepts called gossip about gossip and virtual voting. First of all, the gossip protocol is a way for nodes to share information, ensuring each node has uptodate information, and gossip about gossip improves upon this by adding a history of where the information…