Hedera's presence at the World Economic Forum in Davos 2026 marked a significant shift in perception, positioning the network not as a speculative crypto asset but as industrial-grade infrastructure for trust. The discussions at Davos, focused on governance, accountability, and reliability, played to Hedera's strengths. Its structured governance model and predictable performance, sometimes criticized in retail crypto circles, were highlighted as key advantages for enterprise adoption.
A major signal of this institutional validation was the announcement that global energy giant Repsol joined Hedera's Governing Council. This is not a symbolic move; Repsol plans to deploy decentralized identity solutions for its 24 million customers using the Hedera network. This scale of implementation underscores the network's reliability and governance, which are critical for large corporations.
Beyond identity, Hedera is being positioned as a core infrastructure for ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) and carbon accounting. The network's ability to provide auditable, reliable records for tracking emissions and sustainability data aligns with increasing regulatory and market demands, moving its use cases from experimental to essential.
Analyst Bmendo outlined five key reasons Hedera (HBAR) should not be ignored in 2026, despite its price being down approximately 80% from January 2025 levels. First, its enterprise governance, overseen by a council including Google, IBM, and Boeing, provides long-term credibility and attracts real-world pilots in payments, tokenized assets, and AI workflows.
Second, Hedera's technical capabilities support real-world scale, with sustained throughput in the thousands of transactions per second (TPS), a technical ceiling near 10,000 TPS, finality between 3 to 5 seconds, and consistently low fees. Third, institutional access is expanding through exchange-traded products (ETPs) in Europe and North America and visibility in forums involving SWIFT and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).
Fourth, network upgrades like HIP 1249 and the v0.70 mainnet line focus on increasing smart contract capacity, EVM compatibility, and node reliability for production workloads. Finally, HBAR's fixed supply cap of 50 billion tokens, combined with growing staking activity and network fee burn, is creating subtle supply-side pressure that could influence price dynamics.
The overarching narrative is that Hedera is transitioning into "invisible plumbing" for industries prioritizing trust, compliance, and data integrity, a direction solidified by its reception at Davos 2026.
