Berachain is entering a new phase – partially a return to tradition, and partially rising to opportunities presented by an increasingly mature crypto market. The foundations for exponential growth are in place, from tokenomics improvements to ecosystem support, tech advancements, and more. This latest bit of wordcel-ing outlines where we’re headed, what we’re focusing on, and how we plan to get there.

The Fat Bera Thesis

Almost exactly a year ago, we wrote about the Fat Bera Thesis, as a followup to an excellent thought piece from the team at The Honey Jar from Jan 2023.

The core idea of the Fat Bera Thesis was that the most successful protocols will enshrine applications (via PoL) to capture and distribute value amongst other stakeholders in the ecosystem.

To this date, our belief in that vision has not wavered.

If anything, as the worlds of traditional finance / technology and crypto have grown closer, we’ve only grown more confident in Berachain’s thesis, and its intuitiveness to a traditional growth stage investor.

Every L1 has a set of native resources to be allocated, in the form of their emissions. Most Proof of Stake chains issue a set of inflationary dividends, incentivizing the staking of their tokens in exchange for more tokens.

Berachain’s Proof of Liquidity invests those same assets into B2B2C growth vectors across the ecosystem by enshrining applications within PoL. Berachain enhances these applications’ capacity to drive users, revenue, TVL, and broader economic activity across the network as a byproduct of Proof of Liquidity. And it distributes their value across the rest of the ecosystem, ending up in the hands of BERA and BGT holders.

Much like Microsoft might invest in expanding Office Suite integrations, or Apple might invest in the App Store, Berachain will continue to direct its resources towards creating the fattest apps possible which will in turn drive value back to a rapidly fattening protocol.

Proof of Work was Blockchain 1.0

Proof of Stake is Blockchain 2.0

We hope to make Proof of Liquidity into the face of Blockchain 3.0

This year, we expect a number of these efforts to bear fruits as companies (both known and in stealth) building on the chain generate millions of dollars in revenue, onboard millions of users, and return millions of dollars back to tokenholders. Let’s get after it.

Bera Builds Businesses.

Proof of Liquidity: A Dual-Purpose, Evolving System

Proof of Liquidity (PoL) remains core to Berachain. Its purpose is twofold:

1. Support the development and growth of projects within the ecosystem.
2. Drive value to the $BERA token.

As the ecosystem matures, PoL will continue to evolve. Not through consistent changes or actions that can destabilize builders and community members, but by purely additive approaches to lower barriers to access, create self-propogating systems, and drive value generation for BERA holders, and sustained buy-side pressure for the BERA token.

Earlier today, I posted in the forums about PoL V2 - a minimally disruptive upgrade to the current system designed to enable a portion of PoL incentives to buy back BERA and distribute yield directly to liquid BERA stakers. This serves as the first of many steps in driving value to BERA at the chain level.

Beyond PoL

While PoL plays a core role in Berachain’s growth and narrative, it’s but one part of a much wider ecosystem. Part of our return to tradition will include the return of chain-native DeFi primitives. These were part of the original Bera vision, but were temporarily sidelined due to potential regulatory risk and engineering capacity, both of which have improved over time.

To this end, upcoming launches include:

• Expanded HONEY collateral: broadening the utility of the native stable asset to include widely utilized assets like USDT (https://honey.forum.berachain.com/t/add-usdt0-as-collateral-for-honey-minting/96) among others. Live within 3 weeks.
• Bend: Berachain’s enshrined lending protocol designed for capital efficiency, deeper liquidity and stablecoin proliferation. Live within 4 weeks.
• Berps: upcoming discussions and eventual deployment of on-chain perps infrastructure. Scoping upgrades prior to promising dates for this one.

Beras and Barbells: Suits and Speculators

Berachain’s long-term vision assumes that crypto will not remain a niche. Traditional financial players have entered, and their presence in the space will continue to move crypto businesses towards looking more like…normal businesses. They should make money while directing resources towards growth and scale.

We believe that the ideal Bera eco is going to look a little like the following barbell:

• On one end, traditional web2 businesses using the chain as a backend service. Initiatives across payments, RWAs, consumer initiatives and more should drive billions of assets and millions of users to Berachain by end of year. You’ll see the first couple of initiatives in this direction over the course of the summer.
• On the other, high-velocity on-chain speculation and experimentation — consumer facing dApps, novel financialized games, token launchers, and anything with leverage.
• In the middle, connecting both sides sits a robust and battle tested DeFi base, optimized for larger-scale capital allocation and institutional activity.

The result will be a broad user spectrum: from retail microtransactions to leverage looping to multibillion-dollar assets being tokenized on-chain. The goal isn’t to boil the ocean, but rather to bet on the areas where we know we can leverage our unique edges as a team and as an ecosystem.

BeaconKit: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

The core virtual machine, BeaconKit, is built to provide a seamless experience for developers and users alike, while maintaining identicality to the EVM.

A more opinionated version and efficient version of BeaconKit is coming to:

• Enshrine PoL functionality at the protocol level – further optimizing PoL yields, improving quality of life for validators and protocols, and reducing congestion on the network. Live by Q3.
• Optimize gas and fee market, predicted to burn 1M BERA annually, while solving for congestion. Live by Q3.
• Improve transaction throughput and execution performance. Live by Q4.

This approach ensures that the chain is not just functional and simple for developers, but also economically self-reinforcing. The L1 must capture value natively, and BeaconKit will continue to move in that direction.

Resource Allocation: Bet on Winners

The Berachain team will take a more focused approach to resource allocation. While experimental projects, community and culture will always be a priority, we’ll be dedicating even more of our time and capital to:

• Projects with demonstrated traction.
• Teams building products that generate revenue.
• Founders who have proven they can deliver consistently.
• Teams who are solely focused on Bera

This is a practical shift. It's not about exclusion, but about scaling what’s already working. New ideas will still be supported, but we’ll double down on winners who are putting Berachain on the map, and demonstrating their conviction at every step of the way. Some of you already know who you are, and some of you have tons of potential and will win wherever you go - and we’d like it to be on Bera.

Communications & Community: Back to Reality

We’re getting back to our original roots.

This means:

• More shitposting from the Foundation account.
• Bera themed pushes across traditional social media outlets
• Deputization of international community leaders to host meetups, hackathons, and local events focused on users and developers, starting with the Build-A-Berathon in August.

Somewhere in the post-launch mania and fud about every topic under the sun, we lost part of the unique combination of competence and goofiness that made Berachain appealing to people. The focus is to regain that motion, and genuine engagement with the people building on, using, and supporting Berachain.

Incentives: Introducing the C.R.I.M.E program

A common request that I’ve received over the last couple months is, “Smokey do crime”.

Unfortunately, I’m planning on running Berachain for many years to come, to the chagrin of many, so traditional crime doesn’t seem like the smartest approach.

However, I’m supportive of implementing C.R.I.M.E in the near future.

Community

Rewards and

Incentives for

Meaningful

Engagement

Past experiences with incentives across the broader crypto space, and within internal programs like the RFA at TGE have shown the importance of precision and opinionation around resource allocation. Future Berachain incentive program for the community and builders will be constructed around clearly defined metrics such as:

• On-chain user activity.
• Total value locked (TVL), including share of major assets.
• Trading volume and fee generation.
• Utilization of BERA, or revenue used to drive value to BERA
• And more

Secondary metrics, such as novelty, cultural impact and community strength, will continue to be tracked, but resource allocation will prioritize data-backed impact. All incentives would be issued over extended time frames to drive accountability for teams.

Build-A-Bera: Better Than The Workshop

Build-A-Bera (BaB) has already produced several of the most impactful projects in the ecosystem, and started the meta of “chain-native incubators”. Going forward, we’re going to be more vocal about the work that the BaB team does, and drive well deserved attention towards BaB teams and a number of the special projects coming out of BaB that have yet to be announced.

This includes:

• Dedicated BD and developer resources for selected teams.
• A higher bar for entry, focused on quality and readiness. Smaller, or one-of batches, with S-tier teams.
• A “Fast Grants” stream to support early-stage builders which may not be ready for BaB yet, especially in emerging regions or among solo developers.

The goal is to make Berachain the best place for high-potential teams to start, and to succeed.

Moving Forward

At the end of the day, anyone can write a bunch of words and hope that people get excited. That isn’t the point of this piece.

This article is meant to give some insight into what’s coming next for Berachain - from strategic direction, to philosophical outlook, and perhaps most importantly, a form of accountability. We’ve called our shots, and now we’ll deliver on them. We’re not looking to reinvent the wheel, or flip everything on its head. Rather, we’re focused on refining what works, supporting what grows, and aligning the chain’s success with that of its users and stakeholders.

Execution is the priority. Everything else follows.

Berachain.