Berachain: The Proof-of-Liquidity EVM L1
Berachain is an EVM-identical Layer-1 blockchain launched on 6 February 2025 that replaces classical Proof of Stake with a novel Proof of Liquidity (PoL) consensus, where validator security and DeFi liquidity incentives are merged into a single economic loop. Built on the BeaconKit modular consensus client (a CometBFT derivative), it runs 2-second blocks with 2-second single-slot finality, supports the full EVM surface area without modification, and operates a tri-token economy: BERA for gas, BGT for governance and reward emissions, and HONEY as a native overcollateralized stablecoin. Total ecosystem TVL currently sits at $55.48M, dominated by liquid-staking protocol Infrared Finance and the Kodiak DEX/LP-manager stack.
Berachain occupies a peculiar position in the high-speed L1 category. Unlike its peers — Solana, Sui, Aptos, Monad, Hyperliquid — which compete primarily on raw throughput and sub-second finality, Berachain bets on a fundamentally different question: can consensus security itself be designed to bootstrap and sustain on-chain liquidity? Its Proof of Liquidity mechanism redirects what would normally be validator block rewards (paid in BGT) toward liquidity providers in whitelisted pools, while validators must attract BGT delegations from those LPs to earn the right to propose blocks. The result is a chain whose security budget and DeFi TVL are mechanically coupled. The trade-off is honest: at 2-second blocks and 2-second finality, Berachain is the slowest chain in its high-speed L1 peer group — Solana finalizes in 12.8s but produces blocks every 0.4s, Hyperliquid hits 70ms end-to-end, and Sui/Aptos both close blocks in under 0.65s. Berachain is built for EVM developers who want native Ethereum tooling (Solidity, ethers.js, Foundry, MetaMask, Ledger) plus an incentive model purpose-designed for non-custodial cross-chain swap routing, liquid staking, and stablecoin-anchored DeFi. As of 2026-06-06, the chain is roughly 16 months past mainnet — $55.48M TVL is small in absolute terms relative to peers, but the concentration in Infrared Finance ($31.97M) and Kodiak ($50.09M across V3 + Islands) reflects the PoL flywheel working as designed.
About Berachain
Berachain launched its mainnet and BERA token generation event simultaneously on 6 February 2025, after a multi-year development cycle that began as a NFT-driven community experiment (the Bong Bears collection) and grew into a venture-backed L1 protocol. The project's genesis distinguishes it from most EVM L1s: rather than emerging from an academic consensus paper or an institutional consortium, Berachain was incubated by a community-first team that spent over two years building a closed testnet (Artio) and progressively decentralizing validator participation before opening mainnet. By the time of TGE, the validator set was already operating production-grade BeaconKit infrastructure, and a substantial DeFi ecosystem — including Infrared Finance, Kodiak, BEND, and BEX — was queued for day-one deployment.
The core consensus innovation is Proof of Liquidity (PoL), built on top of the BeaconKit modular consensus layer (a CometBFT-derived BFT engine). In conventional Proof of Stake, validators secure the network by staking the native token and earn issuance directly. Berachain decouples these roles: validators must attract BGT (the governance and reward token) delegations from liquidity providers in whitelisted pools to gain influence over block proposal rights and reward direction. BGT is non-transferable and is emitted to LPs based on validator-directed gauges. This creates a circular incentive: LPs supply liquidity → earn BGT → delegate to validators → validators direct more BGT emissions back to those pools, mechanically aligning consensus security with deep on-chain liquidity. BERA itself is the standard transferable gas asset, while HONEY serves as the chain's native overcollateralized stablecoin.
Technically, Berachain is EVM-identical — not merely EVM-compatible. The execution layer runs an unmodified Ethereum client (Reth/Geth-compatible) at the EL/CL boundary defined by the Engine API, meaning every Solidity contract, every audit pattern, every JSON-RPC method, every dev tool (Foundry, Hardhat, ethers.js, viem, Tenderly, OpenZeppelin libraries) works without modification. ERC-20, ERC-721, and ERC-1155 token standards behave identically to Ethereum mainnet. The address format is standard hex (0x-prefixed, 20-byte EVM), and wallet support spans MetaMask, Rabby, Coinbase Wallet, WalletConnect, and Ledger hardware. This is a deliberate architectural choice that trades novelty for portability: developers shipping cross-chain dApps can deploy the same bytecode to Berachain, Ethereum L1, and any EVM L2 without forking codebases.
The economic design is the most ideologically distinct part of the system. By forcing the security budget through liquidity provision rather than direct staking, Berachain attempts to solve the chronic problem of low-TVL L1s: that capital sits in custodial staking contracts earning yield while DeFi protocols starve for liquidity. Whether the model scales is an open empirical question — the chain is approximately 16 months past mainnet as of 2026-06-06, total ecosystem TVL is $55.48M (modest versus Solana's $4.71B or Hyperliquid's $1.51B in the same peer category), and the long-term sustainability of BGT emissions has yet to be stress-tested across a full market cycle. But the mechanism is genuinely novel, not a re-skin of existing consensus designs.
Berachain technical parameters
Berachain's technical stack pairs a modular CometBFT-derivative consensus engine (BeaconKit) with an unmodified Ethereum execution layer, glued together by the standard EL/CL Engine API. The interesting layer sits above pure consensus: the Proof of Liquidity gauge system that determines how block rewards (BGT) are routed.
| Consensus | Proof of Liquidity (PoL) + BeaconKit (CometBFT) |
|---|---|
| VM | EVM (EVM-identical) |
| Block time | 2 s |
| Finality | 2 s |
| TPS | — typical |
| Gas token | BERA (gas) / BGT (governance) / HONEY (stablecoin) |
| Launched | 2025-02-06 |
| Token standard | ERC-20 / ERC-721 / ERC-1155 |
| Address | hex (0x-prefixed, EVM) |
Consensus mechanism
Proof of Liquidity replaces the validator-stakes-native-token model with a two-token security loop. Validators run BeaconKit nodes that produce 2-second blocks with single-slot deterministic finality — once a block is committed by a two-thirds supermajority of the validator set, it cannot be reverted, similar to Cosmos chains. But validator influence is not bought with BERA. Instead, validators compete for BGT delegations from liquidity providers in whitelisted pools (Kodiak V3, BEX, lending markets, LST protocols). The more BGT delegated to a validator, the more block rewards it receives, and the more reward emissions it can direct back to specific LP pools via gauge votes. BGT itself is non-transferable — it can only be earned by providing liquidity, and can be burned 1:1 for BERA. This means the chain's security budget is mechanically tied to the depth of its DeFi liquidity, not to speculative staking yield. Validators are effectively service providers to LPs rather than rent-extractors. The mechanism is closest in spirit to Curve's veCRV bribe economy, but elevated into the consensus layer itself rather than sitting as an application on top.
Performance context
Berachain's 2-second block time and 2-second finality are honestly modest for the high-speed L1 category. In peer comparison: Hyperliquid finalizes in 70ms, Sui in 0.64s, Aptos in 0.65s, Monad targets 1s, TON and Near both 1-1.2s. Solana produces blocks every 0.4s but takes 12.8s to finalize. Berachain's design priority was clearly EVM-identical compatibility and the PoL mechanism, not raw throughput. Public TPS figures (typical and theoretical maximum) have not yet been benchmarked under sustained mainnet load, so the chain's real capacity ceiling remains an open empirical question. For developers and users, this means Berachain is well-suited to DeFi workflows where 2-second confirmation is acceptable (most non-custodial cross-chain swap routes, lending, LP management) but is not a venue for HFT or sub-second perp trading where peers like Hyperliquid dominate.
Berachain ecosystem map
Berachain's $55.48M ecosystem TVL is heavily concentrated in protocols that directly exploit the Proof of Liquidity gauge mechanism. Liquid staking and concentrated-liquidity DEX/LP managers together account for over $80M of nominal exposure (with significant overlap as LP tokens flow into LST). The top eight DeFi protocols by TVL paint a clear picture: this is a chain currently optimized for yield-bearing liquidity provision rather than for spot trading volume or stablecoin payments.
Liquid Staking
Infrared Finance ($31.97M TVL) is the dominant LST on Berachain, allowing users to stake BERA while retaining liquid iBERA exposure and capturing PoL gauge emissions. Its scale relative to total chain TVL (57%) reflects the natural fit between liquid staking and PoL — LST holders accumulate BGT without locking capital.
Liquidity Manager
Kodiak Islands ($28.24M) is the concentrated-liquidity LP management layer that automates Uniswap V3-style position rebalancing. Combined with Kodiak V3 ($21.85M) the DEX itself, the Kodiak stack handles a plurality of on-chain liquidity routing.
DEX
Kodiak V3 ($21.85M) is Berachain's leading concentrated-liquidity DEX, with BEX ($1.02M) — the official Berachain hub swap — handling lower-TVL native pools. Kodiak V3 is the de-facto venue for non-custodial cross-chain swap settlement on the chain.
Lending
BEND ($11.38M) is the canonical money market on Berachain, supporting BERA, HONEY, and liquid-staked iBERA as collateral. It is the primary borrow venue for users looking to lever up BGT exposure without unwinding LP positions.
Yield
Goldilocks ($550K) and Beradrome ($503K) are emerging yield-routing protocols that aggregate BGT emissions and gauge votes across pools, giving smaller LPs access to validator-directed reward optimization without running infrastructure themselves.
Infrastructure
BeaconKit (the consensus client), Reth/Geth-compatible execution clients, berascan.com (block explorer), and rpc.berachain.com (canonical RPC endpoint) constitute the developer-facing stack. Standard EVM tooling (Foundry, Hardhat, ethers.js, viem, Tenderly) works without modification.
| # | Protocol | Category | TVL |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Infrared Finance | Liquid Staking | $31.97M |
| 2 | Kodiak Islands | Liquidity Manager | $28.24M |
| 3 | Kodiak V3 | Dexs | $21.85M |
| 4 | BEND | Lending | $11.38M |
| 5 | Smilee Finance gBERA | Liquid Staking | $1.12M |
| 6 | BEX | Dexs | $1.02M |
| 7 | Goldilocks | Yield | $550.76K |
| 8 | Beradrome | Yield | $503.04K |
Berachain vs peers
Within the high-speed L1 category (Solana, Aptos, Sui, Monad, Hyperliquid, TON, Near), Berachain is an outlier on three axes: VM, consensus model, and current scale. It is the only peer that runs an EVM-identical execution layer, the only one with consensus security mechanically tied to LP behavior, and currently the smallest by TVL.
| Chain | Block | Finality | TPS | TVL |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solana | 400 ms | 12.8 s | 3k | $4.71B |
| Aptos | 150 ms | 650 ms | 800 | $191.04M |
| Sui | 400 ms | 640 ms | 1.5k | $434.58M |
| Monad | 400 ms | 1 s | — | $348.38M |
| Berachaincurrent | 2 s | 2 s | — | $55.48M |
| Hyperliquid L1 | 70 ms | 70 ms | — | $1.51B |
| TON | 400 ms | 1 s | 17 | $67.06M |
| Near | 600 ms | 1.2 s | 60 | $141.47M |
Comparison insights
- TVL gap is substantial: Berachain's $55.48M is roughly 1.2% of Solana's $4.71B, 3.7% of Hyperliquid L1's $1.51B, and well below Near ($141.47M), Sui ($434.58M), and Monad ($348.38M). Among the high-speed L1 peer group, only Aptos ($191M) and TON ($67M) are within an order of magnitude — and both have substantially longer track records.
- Finality is the slowest in the high-speed L1 cohort: Berachain's 2s end-to-end versus Hyperliquid 70ms, Sui 0.64s, Aptos 0.65s, Monad 1s, TON/Near ~1-1.2s. For applications that need genuine sub-second settlement (perps, MEV-sensitive routing, gaming), Berachain is not the venue. For DeFi where 2s is more than adequate, it is competitive.
- EVM-identical execution is a unique structural advantage: Solana (SVM), Sui/Aptos (Move VM), TON (TVM), and Near (NEAR WASM) all require developers to rewrite contracts in non-Solidity languages. Monad is the only other peer with EVM compatibility (bytecode-level), but Berachain goes further — it runs an unmodified Ethereum client, meaning every audited Solidity contract, every dev tool, every wallet works without porting.
- Tri-token economic design has no direct peer: all other high-speed L1s use a single-token model where the native asset is both gas and stake. Berachain's BERA/BGT/HONEY split — and the non-transferability of BGT — is structurally different from Solana's SOL, Sui's SUI, or Hyperliquid's HYPE. The closest conceptual analog is Curve's vote-escrow model, but elevated into the L1 itself.
- Maturity gap: Berachain launched 2025-02-06, making it roughly 16 months past mainnet as of 2026-06-06. Solana (6+ years), TON (6 years), Near (6 years), Aptos (3.6 years), Sui (3 years), Hyperliquid (~3 years) all have more battle-testing under mainnet load; only Monad (Nov 2025) is younger. PoL is a genuinely novel mechanism whose long-term behavior across a full market cycle is empirically unproven.
Berachain timeline
Berachain's history is short but unusual. The project originated in 2021 from the Bong Bears NFT collection — a community experiment by pseudonymous founders Smokey the Bera, Dev Bear, and Homme Bera — which evolved into a venture-backed L1 thesis around 2022. The team raised funding from Polychain, Framework, and other crypto-native investors across multiple rounds, eventually closing ~$100M+ in total disclosed funding by 2024. Before mainnet, Berachain ran an extended public testnet called Artio (2024) that processed substantial transaction volume, attracted protocol deployments, and ran a long-running incentivized testnet (Boyco) campaign that built community ownership ahead of TGE. Mainnet launch and BERA token generation event occurred simultaneously on 6 February 2025, with the BGT governance token live from day one and a substantial pre-deployed DeFi stack (Infrared, Kodiak, BEX, BEND, HONEY) operating from block zero. As of 2026-06-06 — roughly 16 months post-mainnet — the chain has not experienced any publicly disclosed consensus halts, critical client bugs, or major bridge exploits. There has been one notable formal protocol event in the underlying data: the 2025-02-06 mainnet launch and TGE itself. This is genuinely thin event history compared to peer L1s — Solana, by contrast, suffered multiple multi-hour mainnet outages between 2021 and 2024, and the BSC Token Hub bridge was exploited for ~$570M in 2022. Berachain has yet to face the kind of adversarial stress that reveals consensus or client bugs in real conditions, which should be taken as both a positive (clean operating record so far) and a caveat (the design has not been battle-tested through a full market cycle of sustained high-load conditions or a major exploit attempt). Honest assessment: 16 months without a publicly disclosed incident is encouraging, but the track record is still short relative to peers that have absorbed multi-cycle stress.
- 2025-02-06launchMainnet launch + BERA token TGE
Developer reference
Berachain is one of the cleanest EVM developer experiences among new L1s, precisely because it runs an unmodified Ethereum execution client. Canonical RPC endpoint: https://rpc.berachain.com. Block explorer: berascan.com (Etherscan-compatible API surface). Address format: standard 20-byte hex (0x-prefixed, identical to Ethereum mainnet), so checksums, ENS-style libraries, and address validators work without modification. Token standards are ERC-20, ERC-721, and ERC-1155 — no parallel namespace. Wallet support: MetaMask, Rabby, Coinbase Wallet, WalletConnect, and Ledger hardware (via the standard Ethereum app). Language stack is Solidity/Vyper at the contract layer, with full support for Foundry, Hardhat, ethers.js, viem, Tenderly debugging, OpenZeppelin contracts, and standard verification flows. The PoL-specific surface (BGT delegation, gauge voting, validator interactions) is exposed via standard Solidity precompiles and contracts — no new RPC namespaces required. Official documentation lives at docs.berachain.com. Genesis launch: 2025-02-06.
Assets swappable on Berachain
Grouped by category. Click any asset to open its swap page for a live quote.
Stablecoins
1 assets
Other
1 assets
Berachain settle-time comparison
Shorter bars mean faster confirmations. Real settle time also depends on network congestion — figures are indicative.
Berachain asset coverage comparison
Longer bars mean more assets are swappable on that chain.
Berachain FAQ
01Is Berachain a fully decentralized blockchain?
Berachain runs a permissioned validator set bootstrapped at the 2025-02-06 mainnet launch, with BeaconKit (a CometBFT-derived BFT engine) requiring two-thirds supermajority for finality. Decentralization is currently constrained by validator-set size and the concentration of BGT delegation in a handful of large LST and LP protocols (Infrared Finance alone holds $31.97M of the $55.48M total TVL). The Proof of Liquidity model is designed to widen participation over time as more LPs accumulate BGT and delegate across more validators, but as of 2026-06-06 — roughly 16 months post-mainnet — the chain is still in an early-stage decentralization phase.
02What is Berachain's transaction finality time?
Berachain achieves 2-second single-slot deterministic finality via BeaconKit's CometBFT-derived consensus. Once a block is committed by a two-thirds supermajority of the validator set, it cannot be reverted — unlike probabilistic-finality chains such as Solana (12.8s) or Ethereum (768s). This is honest, fast finality, but it is the slowest in the high-speed L1 peer group (Hyperliquid 70ms, Sui 0.64s, Aptos 0.65s, Monad 1s).
03What makes Proof of Liquidity different from standard Proof of Stake?
In standard PoS, validators stake the native token directly and earn issuance for producing blocks. In Berachain's PoL, validators do not earn rewards by staking BERA — they must attract BGT delegations from liquidity providers in whitelisted pools. BGT is non-transferable, earned only by providing liquidity, and is the unit of validator influence. Validators direct BGT emissions back to LP pools via gauge votes, creating a closed loop where consensus security and DeFi liquidity are mechanically coupled. This is structurally different from how SOL, APT, SUI, or any other peer L1 secures its network.
04Is Berachain EVM-compatible or EVM-identical?
Berachain is EVM-identical, not merely compatible. The execution layer runs an unmodified Ethereum client (Reth/Geth-compatible) connected to BeaconKit via the standard EL/CL Engine API. Every Solidity contract, every ERC-20/721/1155 token, every audit pattern, every dev tool (Foundry, Hardhat, ethers.js, viem), every wallet (MetaMask, Rabby, Coinbase, Ledger) works identically to Ethereum mainnet. This is a stricter compatibility guarantee than Monad's bytecode-compatibility or Polygon zkEVM's prover-compatible model.
05What are BERA, BGT, and HONEY — and why three tokens?
BERA is the transferable native gas token, used to pay transaction fees and as the unit of value across the chain. BGT (Berachain Governance Token) is non-transferable, earned only by liquidity provision, and is used to delegate to validators and vote on gauge weights — it can be burned 1:1 for BERA. HONEY is the chain's native overcollateralized stablecoin, designed to function as a stable unit of account for DeFi. The tri-token split exists because PoL requires separating gas (BERA), governance/reward control (BGT), and a stable medium of exchange (HONEY) — collapsing them into one token would re-introduce the speculative-staking dynamics that PoL is designed to escape.