Berachain’s mainnet is set to launch on Feb. 6, over a year after the project released its public testnet and secured over $100 million in funding.
This week, an Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible layer-1 blockchain called Berachain will roll out its mainnet for on-chain users after years of development.
An X post from the Berachain Foundation confirmed the L1 mainnet is scheduled for a Feb. 6 launch. “TGE will occur at the same time as mainnet launch,” the foundation wrote, referring to the token generation event for Berachain’s ecosystem.
From Feb. 5, users can also view the project’s tokenomics and check for airdrops farmed during the year-long testnet period, which opened in January 2024 with the codename “Artio.”
Berachain’s proof-of-liquidity chain
Berachain’s EVM L1 tapped the Cosmos SDK toolkit to build a blockchain consensus design dubbed “proof-of-liquidity,” a model spun from the popular proof-of-stake network system.
According to the team, proof-of-liquidity or PoL requires users to secure the network by providing liquidity to “DeFi primitives” rather than simply staking tokens. The new EVM L1 uses a triple token system, split across BGT for staking, with BERA as the native gas token and the stablecoin HONEY.
To earn BGT, users must fund on-chain liquidity for decentralized finance views like exchanges or lenders. The token cannot be bought in open markets, only earned per the team’s design. However, users can burn BTG coins to receive BERA tokens. Burned BTG is irredeemable.
Furthermore, delated BGT deposited to validators generates HONEY stablecoin rewards through protocol fees and “bribes”.
Berachain has been under development since 2021, following the non-fungible token collection called “Bong Bears”. The NFT series and Berachain were created by a four-person team of pseudonymous co-founders identified under the monickers Homme Bera, Dev Bear, Papa Bear, and Smokey The Bera.
The team raised $42 million in a private token sale in April 2023 and $100 million in a Series B round co-led by Abu Dhabi’s Brevan Howard Digital branch and Framework Ventures.
