What Is Berachain? The Latest Ethereum, Solana Challenger to Raise Big Money

Pseudonymous founders with bear-themed names have raised $100 million in funding for Berachain—a layer-1 blockchain built with Cosmos tech.

Announced Friday, the Series B funding round was co-led by Brevan Howard Digital, an investment management platform, along with crypto-native VC firm, Framework Ventures. Additional backers include Polychain Capital, Samsung Next, Hack VC, and Hashkey Capital, with angel investors such as Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal and Animoca Brands Chairman Yat Siu.

Investors signed a SAFT agreement, which exchanges current funds for future tokens. The move comes just days after Monad Labs announced its own $225 million raise to build a layer-1 chain to rival giants like Ethereum and Solana.

“We see this raise as a major validation of our approach to building a blockchain that’s built on feedback from real users and developers, and driving value to those groups who are actually contributing to the network’s growth,” Berachain co-founder Smokey the Bera said in a press release.

Berachain plans to use the $100 million raised to strengthen its “economic growth initiatives and engineering resources,” as well as expand its global presence into Hong Kong, Singapore, South East Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Plenty of capital, plans to expand, and confidence from big investors—but what is Berachain?

What is Berachain?

Founded by Smokey the Bear, Homme Bera, and Dev Bear, the EVM-compatible layer-1 blockchain Berachain aims to align incentives for security and liquidity at the network level.

Built on the Cosmos SDK, the layer-1 chain uses the proof-of-liquidity consensus mechanism. This model builds on what proof-of-stake created and attempts to address its limitations.

By providing liquidity to pools, using the network’s native BERA tokens, users earn Bera Governance Tokens (BGT). You can then delegate these tokens to validator(s) who will produce blocks based on the amount of BGT delegated to them. Then, validators vote on future BGT inflation across liquidity pools and distribute block rewards (called bribes) to delegators.

They are joined by existing and new investors including @polychain, @hack_vc, @tribecap, @Nomura’s @LaserDigital_, @HashKey_Capital, @SamsungNext, @NomadCapital_io, @hypersphere_, @Arrington_Cap, @cypher_capital, @TheSpartanGroup, @nolimithodl, @primitivecrypto, @Superscrypt,… pic.twitter.com/ad5rMVErmk

— Berachain 🐻⛓⚛️ (@berachain) April 12, 2024

Berachain argues that this model “increases security by increasing liquidity,” decentralizes inflation, and aligns all parties involved in the ecosystem.

“The Berachain team has essentially built a blockchain that allows users to play a direct role in incentivizing certain apps and even industries to build on their chain, which is a fascinating model for ecosystem growth that we’ve never seen before,” Vance Spencer, co-founder of Framework Ventures, said in the funding announcement.

“The Berachain community is one of the most energized I’ve seen in all of crypto,” Spencer continued, “and I’m excited to see what they will do once they’ve been given the ability to directly shape the future of their chain.”

The project was originally an NFT project called Bit Bears, which the Berachain website says was simply started for a bit of fun. It saw great success, however, leading to a “massive cult community.” This was when the founders saw the vision for what Berachain has become today.

Two months ago, the Berachain testnet was launched, which the press release claims was the “most utilized testnet in blockchain history” with over 300,000 users and 1 million transactions processed in its first 48 hours. Berachain plans to launch its mainnet sometime this quarter.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

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