By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 26th, 2024
Currently, more than 30 native project developers are building in Berachain, and over 100 teams from other networks plan to deploy on the testnet and mainnet.
Berachain, a blockchain project with a bear-themed concept based on the Cosmos ecosystem, has successfully secured $69 million to expand its business operations in preparation for the anticipated mainnet launch later this year.
After years of development, the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform released its public testnet, Artio, in January 2024. With the latest funding, Berachain plans to officially debut its maninet in the second quarter of this year.
Berachain Reaches Unicorn Status with New Funding
According to a Bloomberg report citing people familiar with the matter, the investment round was led by two blockchain-focused venture capital firms, Brevan Howard Digital and Framework Ventures.
The new fundraising has brought the protocol’s total valuation to more than $1.5 billion, making it the latest crypto platform to achieve unicorn status.
The funding follows a successful fundraising effort in April 2023, where Berachain raised $42 million in a private token sale led by Polychain Capital.
Other investors that participated in the funding round include Hack VC, Shima Capital, Robot Ventures, and Goldentree Asset Management.
Similar to its earlier fundraising, the recent round involved the sale of digital tokens. Berachain’s protocol operates on a triple-token model consisting of bera (the native gas token), honey (a native stablecoin), and BGT (the “non-transferrable” Bera Governance Token).
According to the platform, users who stake bera or other approved tokens will receive BGT over time. This allows them to earn honey, which is generated by the underlying chain architecture, as a reward for their participation in governance.
Berachain’s Journey to Mainnet Success
The blockchain project, built under the “proof of liquidity” consensus mechanism, stated that its private testnet was hosted under a non-disclosure agreement.
During this phase, which was completed before the public testnet launch, various partners deployed contracts on the chain. Berachain reported that up to 50 teams deployed their applications on the network.
Currently, more than 30 native project developers are building in Berachain, and over 100 teams from other networks plan to deploy on the testnet and mainnet. This external team includes known projects such as Pendle, Redacted, Sudoswap, and Abracadabra.
The protocol anticipates that after the official mainnet launch, Berachain will be supported by custodians, cross-chain messaging, bridging protocols, and data availability solutions.
In contrast to the traditional Proof of Stake (PoS) networks, where users can enhance the protocol’s security by staking with a validator or providing on-chain liquidity on a DeFi platform, Berachain’s proof of liquidity requires users first to give liquidity to a set of DeFi primitives to contribute to network security.
The protocol was created by a team of anonymous developers who use the pseudonyms Homme Bera, Dev Bear, Papa Bear, and Smokey the Bera. They are known online for using cartoon bear pictures, some depicting the bears smoking weed.