What is Berachain?
Berachain is an EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain that launched its mainnet on February 6, 2025, after a long testnet run that included the Artio and Bartio phases. The chain is built on the Cosmos SDK with Polaris EVM at the execution layer, and it uses CometBFT for consensus. The native gas token is BERA, total supply 500 million at launch, distributed via one of the largest mainnet airdrops of 2025.
The team behind it is anonymous, working under the names Smokey the Bera, Papa Bear, Dev Bear, and Homme Bear. The original development happened inside The Berachain Foundation. Polychain Capital led a $142 million funding round across stages, with Brevan Howard Digital, Framework Ventures, Hack VC, and Tribe Capital joining. The chain shipped to mainnet with Day-1 listings on Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, OKX, KuCoin, and Bybit.
BERA price today
BERA trades against USD, USDT, and USDC across global exchanges, plus deep on-chain liquidity in BERA pools on BeraSwap. Live data on this page comes from a multi-venue feed and refreshes every 60 seconds. The reference quote is volume-weighted across the most liquid books. The all-time high was around $15 shortly after the February 2025 mainnet launch, set during the post-airdrop discovery phase.
What moves BERA on a typical week:
- BeraSwap volume. BeraSwap is the largest DEX on the chain and the main venue for BERA pricing. When swap volume rises, validators and bribers compete harder for emissions and BERA gets a bid.
- BGT-related liquidity flows. BGT is the governance token, earned by liquidity providers and burnable 1:1 for BERA. Any shift in how aggressively LPs convert BGT into BERA shows up directly in spot supply.
- BERA unlock schedule. The team and investor allocations unlock over multiple years. Each cliff is a known supply event, and the market re-prices around scheduled releases.
- Ecosystem dApp launches. New protocols going live on Berachain expand the set of pools competing for emissions, which is the engine that drives demand for staked BERA and locked BGT.
- BTC and SOL correlation. BERA is a small-cap L1 first and a Berachain-specific token second. Most short-term moves track Bitcoin and Solana; the chain-specific drivers show up over longer windows.
The numbers in the price card above are live. For multi-year scenarios that account for unlocks and ecosystem growth, see our Berachain price forecast.
Proof of Liquidity (PoL): a different consensus model
Proof of Liquidity is the part of Berachain that is genuinely new. Most proof-of-stake chains pick validators by how much native token they bond. Berachain picks validators by how much liquidity they direct into the ecosystem dApps that govern fees. Bonded BERA still matters for security, but the rewards flow to whichever validators do the most to deepen pools across the chain.
- Validators stake BERA to secure the chain and earn block rewards in BGT, the non-transferable governance token.
- Validators then direct BGT emissions to the pools they back, usually pools where they or their delegators provide liquidity.
- Liquidity providers in those pools earn BGT directly, which they can either lock for governance power or burn 1:1 for BERA.
- Protocols that want emissions in their pools pay bribes to validators in stablecoins, ETH, or partner tokens.
The result is a live market for liquidity. Validators who pick winning pools earn more bribes and attract more delegators, which earns them more BGT to direct, which deepens those pools further. The flywheel runs on pool selection rather than on raw stake size. Whether it actually holds together at scale is the open question, since no other chain has tried PoL in production.
BERA, BGT, and HONEY: the three-token system
Berachain runs three tokens with very different jobs. Confusing them is the most common mistake people make in the first week of using the chain.
- BERA is the native gas token. It pays transaction fees, it is what validators bond for security, and it is the freely transferable asset that trades on exchanges. Total supply 500 million at launch.
- BGT (Bera Governance Token) is non-transferable. You earn it by providing liquidity to whitelisted pools, and you use it to vote on which pools receive emissions. BGT can be burned 1:1 for BERA, but you cannot send it to another wallet.
- HONEY is the native stablecoin, soft-pegged to USD and overcollateralized. It is the default unit of account in Berachain DeFi, used as the quote token in most pools and as the base of lending markets on protocols like Dolomite.
The point of the split is to separate price exposure from governance. Holders who only want BERA upside can hold and sell freely. Holders who want to influence emissions have to commit liquidity, earn BGT, and either keep it locked for votes or burn it for BERA at a 1:1 ratio. The asymmetry (you can convert BGT to BERA but not back) makes governance power costly to acquire and hard to unwind quickly.
Bong Bears and the pre-mainnet community story
Berachain did not start as a chain. It started as an NFT collection. The Bong Bears dropped in 2021, followed by Bond Bears, Boo Bears, Baby Bears, and a handful of related sets. The art was deliberately rough and the lore was internet-native, which built a tight community around the project years before any code shipped.
When mainnet finally launched in 2025, holders of those original NFTs received some of the largest airdrop allocations on a per-wallet basis. Testnet users from Artio and Bartio also got significant drops, plus a long tail of ecosystem participants from related protocols. The community had been waiting for years, which is why the Day-1 trading volume was unusually high for a brand-new L1.
The pre-mainnet story matters because it explains who actually held BERA on Day 1. A meaningful share went to people who had been part of the Bong Bears Discord since 2021. That holder base is more cohesive than a typical airdrop cohort, and it shows up in lower sell pressure during the early weeks compared to other 2025 mainnet launches.
Major dApps at launch: BeraSwap, Dolomite, Kodiak
Berachain launched with a working DeFi stack on Day 1 rather than an empty chain waiting for builders. The team had spent the testnet phase shipping reference protocols and onboarding outside teams, so mainnet went live with active liquidity and real volume from the first block.
- BeraSwap is the in-house DEX and the largest venue for BERA-paired trades. It is where the bulk of HONEY, BERA, and BGT pool activity happens.
- Honey is the stablecoin issuer protocol. Users mint HONEY against approved collateral, which is how the native stablecoin enters circulation.
- BGT Station is the governance and bribe market. Validators and protocols meet here to coordinate which pools get emissions and how much bribes are paying.
- Dolomite is the main lending and margin protocol on the chain. It supports HONEY-quoted markets and integrates with the BGT system for liquidity incentives.
- Kodiak is a concentrated-liquidity DEX, similar in design to Uniswap v3, that runs alongside BeraSwap for capital-efficient pools.
- Yeet and Beradrome are smaller protocols that play specific roles in the bribe and emissions markets, with Beradrome borrowing from the
- ve-token playbook used by Aerodrome on Base.
The whole stack is built around routing emissions through PoL. Every protocol on the list either directs BGT, earns BGT, or pays bribes in HONEY or stablecoins to attract BGT. That is what makes Berachain DeFi feel different in the first weeks: the unit of account is liquidity itself, not just yield.
How to buy and stake Berachain (BERA)
BERA is widely listed but most of the chain-specific activity lives on Berachain itself. The path you take depends on whether you want passive BERA exposure or active participation in PoL through liquidity provision.
- Pick a venue. Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, OKX, KuCoin, and Bybit all listed BERA on Day 1 with USD or USDT pairs. Our exchange ratings compare the leading platforms on fees, security, and supported networks.
- Verify your identity. KYC on regulated platforms usually takes under 10 minutes. Set up a self-custody wallet (MetaMask works; Berachain is EVM-compatible) at the same time if you plan to use the network.
- Fund the account and place the order. Bank transfers and stablecoin deposits are the cheapest funding paths. A market order fills now; a limit order sets the maximum you are willing to pay. For positions over $10,000, splitting into a few orders during peak liquidity hours reduces slippage.
- Bridge to Berachain via the canonical bridge. From Ethereum or another EVM chain, the canonical Berachain bridge moves USDC, ETH, and supported assets onto the chain. Third-party bridges work but add counterparty risk; the canonical route is the safest first transfer.
- Stake BERA or provide liquidity for BGT. Bonding BERA to a validator earns delegation rewards. Providing liquidity in whitelisted pools on BeraSwap or Kodiak earns BGT directly, which you can lock for governance votes or burn 1:1 for more BERA.
Send a small test transfer the first time you bridge. The canonical Berachain bridge is the official path, but a $1 test on a fresh wallet beats a misrouted five-figure transaction.
Risks of holding Berachain
BERA carries a particular set of risks because PoL has never run at scale, the token is early in its unlock schedule, and the ecosystem is still maturing. The list below is specific to BERA rather than generic crypto-volatility boilerplate.
- PoL untested at scale. Proof of Liquidity is genuinely new. The mechanics held together on Bartio testnet and through the first months of mainnet, but no chain has stress-tested the model under a sustained bear market or a coordinated attack on bribe markets. If validators collude on pool selection or LPs front-run governance votes, the design has to prove it can absorb that.
- BERA unlock pressure. The team and investor allocations unlock over multiple years from the February 2025 launch. Each cliff is a known supply event, and the share of total supply held by long-term insiders is large enough that unlocks meaningfully change the float. Holders should track the schedule before sizing positions.
- Ecosystem maturity. Berachain DeFi is functional but young. BeraSwap, Dolomite, Kodiak, and the rest have audits, but they are also forks or original code that has only seen a few months of mainnet stress. A bug in any one of them can drain a pool or break the bribe flow that supports BGT yield.
- Governance via BGT vs BERA disconnect. BGT votes on emissions; BERA does not. Holders who buy BERA on a centralized exchange have zero governance power until they bridge, provide liquidity, and earn BGT. That gap means most BERA holders are economically exposed to decisions they cannot influence.
- Smart contract risk. PoL routes value through validator contracts, gauge contracts, and stablecoin issuance contracts. The surface area is wider than a standard L1 because so much of the chain logic lives in DeFi-style contracts on top of Cosmos SDK modules. A single critical bug in a core contract can affect emissions chain-wide.
- Custody. BERA on a centralized exchange depends on the exchange’s solvency. Long-term holdings belong in a self-custody wallet on Berachain, especially if you plan to lock BGT or run liquidity positions.
- L1 competition. Solana, Sui, Aptos, and a long list of new EVM L1s are competing for the same DeFi-native users that Berachain wants. If PoL fails to produce a clearly better DeFi experience, capital rotates back to the incumbents.
This page is information, not financial advice. Talk to someone licensed before allocating real capital.
Berachain's all-time high of $14.83 was set on February 6, 2025. The current price sits +98.73% below that peak. Distance from the all-time high is a common reference point when evaluating long recoveries and macro support or resistance.
Buying Berachain (BERA) is a five-step routine once you have picked the right venue and pair. The steps below mirror what most investors do today.
Whether Berachain is a good investment depends on your goals, time horizon, and tolerance for volatility. Like all cryptocurrencies, BERA carries real market risk: prices can rise or fall sharply in a day, and past performance is not a reliable indicator of future returns.
This page provides data and analysis for educational purposes only. It is not financial advice. Always do your own research, diversify, and never invest more than you can afford to lose.
