Bm folks,

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve received helpful feedback from the Berachain ecosystem builders and users, which has been instrumental in refining the governance process. 

While we believe PoL is still in its infancy and should continue to evolve (within reason) over time, we’re excited to move towards a more pro-active, transparent, and decentralized governance system armed with our current experience. 

Starting this week, RFRVs will be ratified by the full Governance Guardian council, consisting of the following members:

1. Joon Kim, Director of the independent BGT Foundation. Joon also serves as the director of the Celestia Foundation and holds a JD from Cornell Law School. He was previously a GC of several layer 1 protocols, including Terra, and Vice President at Goldman Sachs. He serves to represent the interests of the BGT Foundation. 
2. Homme, Director of the Bera Chain Foundation. Homme is one of the cofounders of Berachain and possesses deep experience from his years in institutional banking, DeFi, and international relations. He serves to represent the interests of the Berachain Foundation.
3. Janitoor, Founder of The Honey Jar. Janitor is a 10+ year crypto veteran and well-known figure within the Berachain ecosystem. He has spent the last ~4 years building out the venture studio/community initiative that is the Honey Jar, spanning validator services, LSTs, questing platforms, NFTs, and more. He represents the interests of the community and culture on Berachain.
4. Yogi is the head of the Ecosystem at Bera Labs. He is a 10-plus-year crypto veteran with deep traditional financial knowledge and experience building some of crypto’s first protocols. He represents the interests of (and provides relevant context for) the Berachain ecosystem team.
5. Matt is a quantitative Researcher at Asymmetric Research (AR). AR has been a core contributor to Beaconkit and served as a valuable technology and security partner throughout its last year of development. Matt helps represent the economic and technical impacts of potential RFRVs. 

Joon, Janitoor, and Matt are independent from the Berachain team. Each of these five council members has demonstrated their long-term alignment and vested interest in the success of Berachain and its ecosystem as a whole. They have been chosen to represent the balanced interests of the community while involving members with enough context on the various parties within the ecosystem to help inform nuanced decisions. 

Avid community members may have also noted increased activity on the forums. This is part of an ongoing effort to involve as many relevant stakeholders as possible in the diligence and approval processes for RFRVs. 

On an ongoing basis, the following process is expected to be upheld for governance.

1. A protocol team may apply for a reward vault by filling out a Typeform as found here and posting on the Governance Forums.
2. The independent BGT Foundation will commission the Berachain ecosystem team (under the accounts BeraLabs1-5) to engage in the comments, provide high-level feedback and questions, and check whether the proposal meets the requirements outlined in previous governance literature.
3. Any community member may engage in parallel by posting on the forums. Protocol teams are recommended to respond to these questions and work through as many questions as possible in a public forum.
4. Following this initial diligence process, the independent BGT Foundation will task the Berachain ecosystem team with providing recommendations and rationale to the Governance Guardians. To date, the process has been spearheaded by Homme and Joon; however, upcoming decisions will be made via a majority vote across all five Guardians. 
5. In the case of a conflict of interest, Guardian(s) will recuse themselves from a vote. Such conflicts may involve private investments or large sums of capital being invested in a protocol whose reward vault application is being evaluated, among others. In the case of a tied vote, Joon will serve as a tiebreaker. 
6. The Governance Guardians will review recommendations and feedback and may engage directly in the forums. Each week, before new reward vaults are activated, they will provide a public decision on the application, whether it is accepted, rejected (with feedback), or still under review (potentially given a large volume of applications or more DD required). 

It’s important to note that while the Berachain ecosystem team may make recommendations for the Governance Guardians, they will ultimately have no final authority in the decisions made. 

Functionally, the Guardians will be ensuring that applications meet the previously stated requirements while answering the following questions to themselves: 

1. Does this vault drive value to the $BERA token? While economic experimentation is important, it is equally important to avoid simply subsidizing user/liquidity acquisition for protocols that don’t drive value back to $BERA. This works towards the long-term sustainability of Berachain, as PoL yields scale alongside the token price.
2. Does this vault stimulate economic activity and growth on the chain? This often involves productive TVL, volume, fee generation, user acquisition, or other markets of product market fit.
3. Has this protocol been part of the Berachain community/ecosystem for a meaningful period? In short, are they here to farm and extract value or contribute to the whole ecosystem? Does the protocol have a track record of performance?
4. Does this vault help accelerate a novel application or use case within the Berachain ecosystem?
5. Does this vault/application pose any technical risk to the ecosystem? If misused, could it be potentially malicious?
6. Does this vault contribute to developing products supporting Berachain’s community and culture?
7. Does this vault possess the potential to generate positive unit economics? 
8. Could this vault help onboard thousands of users to Berachain?
9. Does this vault possess the potential to unlock meaningful institutional capital for Berachain?

We’re hopeful that this process will lead to more effective and transparent decision-making across the ecosystem, emphasizing public communication between protocol teams, the Berachain ecosystem team, and the Governance Guardians. 

Without further ado, please find this week's set of approved Reward Vaults: 

BEX POOLS (Vault Proposer — Pool)

• Wizzwoods — WIZZ/wBERA

NON-BEX POOLS (DEX — Vault Proposer — Pair)

• Wasabee — Wasabee — iBERA/wBERA
• Wasabee — Wasabee — wgBERA/wBERA
• Kodiak — Bedrock — BR/wBERA
• Kodiak — BeraBorrow — POLLEN/wBERA
• Kodiak — Henlo — HENLO/wBERA
• Kodiak — Ooga Booga — OOGA/wBERA
• Kodiak — OpenState — osBGT/iBERA
• Kodiak — BeraPaw — LBGT/wBERA
• Kodiak — BakerDAO — LBGT/BREAD

NON-DEX Vaults (Proposer - Utility)

• BULL ISH — Bullas Game
• Dolomite — dBERA
• Henlo — Henlockers (100M, 330M, 420M, 690M, 1B)
• D2 Finance — dgnBeraLand
• D2 Finance — HyperBera.USDC
• WeBera Finance — weiBERA Vault
• WeBera Finance — weWBERA Vault