Hedera Hashgraph Development: Tokens, Topics and Smart Contracts

Hedera hashgraph development starts with one choice for each feature: the Hedera Token Service, the Hedera Consensus Service, or an EVM smart contract. This guide explains what each service does, what it costs in US dollars, which tools work, and how to scope a build on the public network.

It covers the practical side of Hedera development, while the hashgraph vs blockchain page explains the consensus algorithm itself: gossip about gossip, virtual voting and asynchronous Byzantine fault tolerance (aBFT).

The three Hedera services and when to use each

Many Hedera projects issue their token through HTS, because HTS fees are low and fixed in dollars. Solidity contracts then call the token through the HTS system contract when the project needs custom rules.

Hedera Token Service in practice

An HTS token is a native ledger object. When you create one, you decide which keys exist and who holds them, and those keys define what an issuer can do to holders later:

• Admin key updates or deletes the token.
• KYC key grants or revokes an account's permission to hold the token.
• Freeze key freezes an account's balance of the token.
• Wipe key removes tokens from an account, a power regulated assets often need, for example to follow a court order.
• Pause key stops all transfers of the token.
• Supply key mints and burns tokens.
• Fee schedule key changes the custom fees.

HTS supports three custom fee types: fixed, fractional and royalty. The network collects these fees on every qualifying transfer, so a marketplace cannot skip an NFT royalty. A royalty fee can also carry a fallback fee, which the network charges when an NFT moves without any payment.

If you leave a key unset at creation, nobody can ever use that power on the token, and holders can check which keys are unset to see which powers the issuer does not have. A key held in one hot wallet is a single point of failure, so use threshold keys or a custody provider for any token that holds value. The guide to building a tokenization platform covers asset tokens in more depth.

Hedera accounts must associate with a token before they can hold it, and the association costs $0.05. HIP-904 (frictionless airdrops) changed how association works in 2024:

• An account can set its auto-association limit to -1, which means unlimited.
• Accounts that the network creates automatically, when someone sends HBAR to a new alias, get the -1 setting by default.
• A TokenAirdrop transaction pays the association fee for the receiver.
• If the receiver has no free association slot, the airdrop waits as a pending transfer until the receiver claims it.

Build association, airdrops and pending claims into your onboarding flow and your error handling.

Hedera Consensus Service in practice

HCS lets an application keep its logic and data off the ledger and still prove the order of its events. You create a topic and send messages to it, and a submit key on the topic limits who can post. The network returns a consensus timestamp and a running hash for each message, and mirror nodes store the messages, so anyone can check the sequence later.

HIP-991 added custom fees to topics, so a topic owner can now charge a fixed fee in HBAR or an HTS token for each message.

Mainnet topics are public. Hash or encrypt sensitive data before you submit it, and never post personal data in clear text. HCS suits supply-chain traceability and audit logs, where several parties need the same record of events.

Smart contracts on Hedera

Hedera runs the Ethereum Virtual Machine, so Solidity, Hardhat, Foundry and ethers.js work through the JSON-RPC relay, and MetaMask and other EVM wallets can connect through it too. A Solidity developer should plan for these differences:

• Each account has a native ID such as 0.0.12345 and an EVM address, and your interface and your indexer must handle both forms.
• Solidity code reaches HTS through a system contract. HTS tokens also expose ERC-20 and ERC-721 interfaces, so standard calls such as transfer work.
• The network sets gas prices in US dollar terms and applies its own limits and throttles, so test realistic workloads early.
• EVM compatibility does not remove the need for a review, so run the same smart contract audit you would run on any other chain.

Hedera fees in US dollars

Hedera sets each fee in US dollars and charges it in HBAR. The HBAR amount moves with the HBAR price, but the dollar cost stays the same. The table below lists base fees from the Hedera fee page in October 2026.

Extra signatures, keys and larger transactions add small charges. Hedera can change the schedule, so check the official fee page before you budget. A product that sends one million HCS messages a month pays about $800 in network fees at the current rate.

Hedera development tools

• SDKs: official SDKs for JavaScript, Java, Go, Rust and other languages build and sign native transactions.
• Mirror nodes: REST and gRPC APIs return history, balances and topic messages, and most reads in an app go to a mirror node. The public mirror node has rate limits, so busy apps use a paid provider or run their own.
• JSON-RPC relay: connects EVM tools and wallets to Hedera.
• Solo: runs a local Hedera network for tests and replaces Hiero Local Node, which the project began to deprecate in March 2026.
• HashScan: a public explorer for accounts, tokens, topics and contracts.

The developer portal gives free testnet accounts with test HBAR. The Hedera code base is open source under the name Hiero, hosted by the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust since 2024.

How to scope a Hedera hashgraph development project

1. Map each feature to HTS, HCS, a contract or an off-chain service, and use a native service where one fits.
2. Design the token keys and the custody setup before anyone writes code.
3. Decide how users get accounts: wallet connection, custodial creation, or automatic creation from an alias.
4. Build a prototype on testnet and measure fees and throttles under load.
5. Plan reads around mirror nodes and their rate limits.
6. Audit the contracts, review key management, then launch on mainnet.

Team size and schedule depend on scope. A token with a simple web dashboard on HTS and a standard wallet connection is a few weeks of work for two developers. A product that combines HTS, HCS, custom Solidity, a custody integration and compliance workflows takes several months and a larger team. Integrations with wallets, custody and existing systems usually take more time than the ledger code.

Who runs the Hedera network

The Hedera Council governs the network and its members run the consensus nodes. The council has room for 39 members, and its website listed 31 organizations in 2026. Each member serves a three-year term and has one vote. Node operation is permissioned today. Hedera has published a long-term plan to open it to others, but the plan has no fixed date. In late 2025 Hedera began to roll out block nodes, which take data storage and queries off the consensus nodes.

Frequently asked questions