what's berachain?
Berachain is an EVM-identical Layer 1 blockchain designed to enhance liquidity and security in decentralized finance through its novel Proof-of-Liquidity (PoL) consensus mechanism. This approach incentivizes validators to provide liquidity to ecosystem projects, aligning network security with DeFi activity and reducing fragmentation across chains. The native token, BERA, facilitates governance, staking, and transaction fees, while HONEY serves as the gas token minted via liquidity provision. Key features include seamless EVM compatibility for easy dApp migration, support for high-throughput transactions, and an expanding ecosystem with DeFi protocols, NFTs, and recent integrations like GMX Multichain for cross-chain trading. Berachain's mainnet launched in early 2025, focusing on community-driven growth through events, regional expansions such as Korea, and incentive programs via reward vaults like plvLOOP, plvDOLO, and plvHEDGE. The project emphasizes bear-themed branding and has seen milestones like significant trading volume resurgences amid market volatility.
Berachain integrates Credifi for unsecured loans; RocketX offers zero-fee token swaps.
Integrated with Credifi, a DeFi credit protocol offering unsecured personal loans with funds disbursed via bank transfers or crypto.
Zero-fee swaps into Berachain tokens are available through RocketX during December 2025.
Investor Shima Capital, which holds a position in berachain, faces SEC lawsuit alleging fraud and its founder plans to wind down the fund.
Equilibria protocol integration enables iBGT holders to earn over 100% boosted APY with automatic 2x Infrared Points stacking on positions.
Berachain holds 0.81% mindshare ranking 14th out of 20 major blockchain ecosystems in 2025.
Market observers note comparatively poor performance of recently launched L1s including Berachain, with the premium for L1 blockchains wearing off this cycle.
Berachain implements chain-level censorship interventions in response to a Balancer hack affecting the network, similar to actions taken by Sonic Chain. (ID: 2000520856666350005)
Infrared Finance, a liquid staking protocol on the chain, conducts its Token Generation Event on December 17.
Greenlane adds $8M in BERA to their Berachain strategy.
iBERA integrates with BitGo as the first and only LST with a qualified custodian on the chain, enabling institutional investors to stake BERA through standard crypto custody.
New oDOLO rewards become available to holders of eight different tokens including HONEY, USDC, BERA, WBTC, USD1, srUSD, BYUSD, and ETH.
Rhea protocol launches on the chain with USDT0 support, enabling cross-chain lending and borrowing where users can supply Tether for yield or borrow USDT0 using collateral from other chains.
Governance discussions scheduled to address PoL efficiency with plans to remove self-farming vaults, eliminate vanity TVL vaults, and implement PoL mechanism changes targeting more than $1 protocol return per $1 BGT emission.
BYUSD iVault migrates from BEX to KodiakFi, requiring all users to manually migrate their funds to continue earning rewards.
Research shows over $10M spent on conference-related expenses including nightlife venues and entertainment activities.
Project raised $200m in funding and conducted additional fundraising for a DAT.
Greenlane purchases $8 million worth of BERA tokens.
Reflexivity Research reports a hardfork as a contributing factor to current DeFi stress conditions.
Price performance shows 92% decline since launch in 2025.
DAT treasury holds majority of assets in cash and stables with plans to buy more BERA tokens.
Infrared Finance holds $300M TVL and raised $19M from Framework Ventures and YZI Labs, with upcoming iVaults launch and cross-chain expansion as catalysts; the post is sponsored by Infrared.
TVL declined approximately 88% from $2.19B two weeks post-launch to current $267M, ranking 23rd among chains by TVL.
Infrared Finance announces upcoming TGE for $IR token; the protocol operates as the main infrastructure provider for Berachain's Proof-of-Liquidity with $50m+ annualized revenue and 35%+ BGT emissions control, with backing from Framework, Binance/YZi, Animoca, and Hack VC.
Build A Bera serves as incubator for JOY, a GameFi hardware publisher developing the JOY Genesis gaming console, with additional backing from Venture Launch (Solana), Laser Digital/Nomura, Somnia, Incentiv, and Moonbeam.
Berachain's gaming suite is listed as an external partner for JOY Genesis, a Web3 gaming console and GameFi hardware publisher, alongside Star Atlas, Avalon, and World of Dypians.
Former team member and Berabaddie Cami departs from the project and later publicly states she never believed the technology was special, describing it as only hype and timing, representing negative insider sentiment and potential reputational damage.
Some ecosystem projects bot their posts and pay KOLs ahead of upcoming TGEs.
oDOLO_rewards.exe program goes live for holders of HONEY, USDC, BERA, WBTC, USD1, srUSD, BYUSD, and ETH.
Infrared Finance generates $53M+ in annualized product revenue and $4M in infrastructure revenue, controls 35%+ of all BGT emissions, and covers 165+ PoL vaults representing 87% of the network.
Infrared Finance raised $18M from Binance Labs, Framework, and Animoca, and ended its points program in November. The protocol represents 75% of Berachain's TVL and generated $8.3M in protocol revenue.
Infrared Finance partners with T1 entities PayPal, BitGo, Dolomite, Pendle, and Euler, secures one third of all staked BERA, and plans multi-chain expansion through iVault strategies.
USDe serves as the 100% backing asset for HONEY stablecoin. Goldilend protocol offers over 150% yields on stablecoins.
The protocol has distributed over $30m in PoL incentives to tokenholders and plans to incorporate direct revenue drivers into its future strategy, with business-related announcements teased as coming soon.
Infrared Finance peaked at over 2B TVL ahead of its upcoming TGE.
Infrared Finance, the largest protocol on the chain, generates around $50m in annualized revenue and is backed by YZI Labs ahead of its upcoming TGE.
A second bailout for Balancer is discussed following the initial hard fork response to the hack.
Infrared Finance TGE approaches, described as the base layer of the economic engine for the ecosystem.
plvHEDGE, a delta-neutral hedging product, launches on Berachain alongside Arbitrum and Superseed.
The token experienced a 92% price decline so far this year.
The protocol executed a hard fork as a direct response to the Balancer hack which exploited over $120 million.
The project's approach to treasury management and incentive distribution is characterized as wasteful and inefficient compared to competitor strategies.
The project disputes claims of Nova refund rights.
The team is in the market for teams building revenue-generating products that can be integrated within the protocol and invites interested parties to reach out directly.
The project added a seven-figure annualized revenue stream over the past couple months and is in late stages of adding a second revenue stream.
Bera NFTs experience their first liquidation events, with the largest liquidation event recorded so far.
The token launch performed poorly and trended downward, characterized as one of several L1/L2 launches in the past 1-2 years that "went horribly and down only."
A community vote results in a credibility score downgrade from 1649 to 1470, with 76% of participants voting to slash the rating after a 48-hour voting period.
Nova Digital holds a $25 million refund right related to a deal involving Brevan Howard, with crypto podcast hosts characterizing the arrangement as unusual.
Real-world e-commerce sales data integration is coming on-chain, though the feature is not yet fully live.
Community allegations surface that an individual associated with miberas NFT collection extracted $2 million and abandoned the project for extended periods without supporting the floor price.
oDOLO rewards program distributes weekly rewards every Thursday to holders of HONEY, USDC, BERA, WBTC, USD1, srUSD, BYUSD, and ETH.
TVL drops 85% since mainnet launch due to withdrawals from Boyco pre-launch deposit program, while token price falls over 90% from launch highs.
An Ethos Network slash proposal targets parties involved in reporting on the commercial agreements controversy, escalating the dispute to on-chain governance action.
The project faces a 200 credibility score penalty for violating skin-in-the-game principles by hiding misaligned incentives. CEO disputes accuracy of Brevan Howard refund reporting, but journalist Kubinec maintains no factual errors were challenged in the response.
LiquidRoyalty tokenized royalty streams launch scheduled for Black Friday, bringing real-world revenues onchain.
A contradiction emerges between Berachain's official statement and leaked refund agreement terms; the official explanation states the refund clause applies if TGE fails to complete, while the actual clause document shows refund rights extend one year post-TGE completion, raising transparency concerns about the official response.
24-hour revenue totals $987, showing extremely low operational performance metrics.
The investor refund provision includes a $3 price target by February; failure to reach this level makes the $25M refund financially advantageous for Nova Digital to exercise.
The project raised a total of $200M in funding, and the token experienced a 90% decline for retail users post-launch. Beyond the Brevan Howard deal, the project made multiple undisclosed deals with trading firms and sold locked tokens to a DAT, contradicting claims that tokens were locked.
Holdstation integrates Chainlink CCIP to enable cross-chain transfers of HOLD token across BNB Chain, Berachain, and zkSync with 1:1 swap ratio and zero migration fees. The integration makes Holdstation a Chainlink Build member with seamless multichain functionality including the ecosystem.
Token Generation Event set for February 6, 2025. CEO Smokey The Bera officially states no other Series B purchasers were issued MFN clauses beyond Brevan Howard.
Official team response confirms Brevan Howard's Nova fund remains one of the largest tokenholders and increased BERA exposure over time by purchasing additional tokens on open markets beyond their Series B allocation. The team explains the $25M refund provision was required by Nova's compliance team for their liquid-only fund strategy in case of failed TGE, not to prevent post-launch losses, and Nova remains a locked tokenholder.
The project executes a VC rebate equal to 19% of Wildcat's TVL.
Leaked documents reveal Berachain granted Brevan Howard's Nova Digital fund a $25M refund right on its Series B investment, allowing the VC to reclaim the entire investment one year after TGE while other investors were kept uninformed, raising potential legal concerns.
KodiakFi, the native liquidity platform, experiences a 62% TVL jump to $154M, marking the strongest single-day increase among protocols.
TVL increased 27.89% in the past 24 hours to reach $271.44M, outperforming other chains which posted mostly single-digit gains.
Launch occurs at approximately $8 billion valuation with concerns about airdrop selling pressure impacting price.
Oneshotbid launches as the first Hyperliquid frontend on Berachain, built by Beradrome, offering crypto and equity perpetuals trading with 25% of builder code fees allocated to $BERO buybacks.
USDT0 on Berachain ranks as one of the two fastest growing stablecoins based on 30-day market cap growth.
A DEX on Berachain reaches $3B cumulative volume while trading at sub $300k FDV, offers token staking at 150% APR paid in HONEY with zero emissions, and features v4 hooks, perps product, and order book (tweet author discloses holding large supply percentage).
New yield farming opportunity offers oDOLO rewards distributed every Thursday for supplying HONEY, USDC, BERA, WBTC, USD1, srUSD, BYUSD, and ETH.
Bivot bribes are now available for the BERO-WBERA gauge.
Guardians approve two new non-DEX reward vaults, introducing boosted HONEY yield through TermMaxFi and liquidity incentives for BeraPaw's BERA derivatives.
TermMaxFi powers new fixed-rate lending and borrowing feature now live, enabling HONEY borrowing against iBGT and PT-iBGT-25DEC2025.
Following the Balancer exploit, a protocol successfully handled $400M in redemptions representing 90% of its TVL with full 1:1 redemptions and no bad debt.
Majority of stablecoin funds from the Balancer exploit have been claimed on BEX, with over 90% of ETH recovered but only 40% of BERA claimed, and a claims page now operational for affected users.
Berachain implements emergency withdrawals in response to a Balancer exploit.
Multiple Berachain ecosystem projects are forking and rebranding to Monad and Megaeth.
Current TVL stands at $300M, ranking 4th among new 2025 chains in the comparison.
Arthur Hayes publicly criticized Berachain and Smokey.
KodiakFi is backed by Build-a-Bera, CitizenX, Hack VC, Amber Group, and dao5.
A second trading competition on KodiakFi launches after the current November 15 competition concludes.
KodiakFi runs a $50K trading competition until November 15 with Kodiak points rewards for perpetuals trading.
A PFP NFT collection called miteddy21e8 is actively minting with 493.32 $BERA spent on minting attempts so far.
oDOLO rewards go live for holders of HONEY, USDC, BERA, WBTC, USD1, srUSD, BYUSD, and ETH.
Epoch 40 goes live with WBERA-BERO farm reaching 282% vAPR after Bivot rewards addition, while $21k in voting rewards distributes to hiBERO holders and ApiologyDAO agreement continues gauge bribing for the next month.
BEX incident recovery claims go live with emergency withdrawal mode activated for affected stable pools, while weighted pools and vault remain paused pending ongoing Balancer team investigation.
Mid 8-figure DAT (Digital Asset Treasury) buying activity totaling tens of millions supports a new wave of projects launching in the ecosystem.
YeetStrategy ($YAT), a Berachain ecosystem project, closes a $120k PIPE funding round (40k BERA) to build a digital asset treasury for $YEET.
A public ICO is referenced as an upcoming event that traders plan to participate in. The tweet also provides tokenomics data showing 16.8% team allocation and 15.8% airdropped.
On November 14, a Claims Page launches for Balancer V2 exploit victims.
Network experienced a chain halt. Paddle.fi Oracle problems impacted lending protocols with liquidation risk warnings issued to users.
All $12.8 million from the BEX/Balancer v2 exploit has been fully recovered with assistance from a white-hat hacker.
Reservoir protocol suffers $350 million in redemptions over two weeks as DeFi contagion spreads, with remaining backing including large Berachain liquidity position of questionable status due to Balancer hack.
Ecosystem TGEs and new launches scheduled for next week as operations return to normal.
Dolomite announces oDOLO rewards claimable for holders of HONEY, BERA, USDC, WBTC, USD1, srUSD, BYUSD, and ETH at SmartCon 2025.
Claims page launches early next week for BEX exploit victims to reclaim deposits with approximately 96% of deposited value recovered across most pools. Additional hard fork scheduled later next week to unblock BEX contracts at VM level and re-enable pool functionality through Recovery Mode.
InfraredFinance conducts airdrop today for the ecosystem.
Three new infrastructure projects join the ecosystem: Magpie (MegaDAO), Bonsai DAO (MetaDAO), and Winnieswap (Liquidity Hub).
Exchanges have binaries and will enable deposits within the next day. Bridges operational with LayerZero up and Ethena transfers out of Bera re-enabled.