As the Berachain ecosystem continues to expand, so too does the scope of PoL-powered incentives. This week marks the fourth batch of approved Reward Vaults (RFRVs), reviewed and ratified by the Governance Guardians based on updated standards introduced earlier this month. 

This was the first batch of reward vaults which received input from the wider set of Governance Guardians. One member of the Guardians was not present for voting due to scheduling issues, but quorum was met on all approved proposals. Notably, there are still proposals which the Guardians wish to further evaluate, which will be reviewed in more depth over the next week. We apologize for the extended review timeframe given that it was the first week operating with a larger council, and are refining internal processes and taking community feedback to ensure that future batches are handled in the expected and timely manner.

Batch 4 reflects the continuing evolution of Berachain governance and diversity of applications within the ecosystem. As always, proposals were evaluated based on the framework outlined in the Governance Standards for Reward Vaults, with a continued focus on utility, user demand and alignment with $BERA value accrual.

In parallel with the vault approvals, protocol-level updates are being implemented, including enhancements to the Proof-of-Liquidity (PoL) infrastructure. These changes will be live tomorrow and include support for up to three incentive tokens per reward vault and adjustments to BGT emissions to maintain the 10% target network inflation rate. This week, the Guardians also approved an update to the custody structure for HONEY’s USDC collateral, with implementation details available on the governance forum. These changes aim to improve incentive flexibility and support continued alignment between validator behavior, user participation, and application-side liquidity provisioning. 

All approved reward vaults from this batch are either live or will be live shortly. For teams looking to participate in the next batch, RFRV submissions are due every Thursday at 00:00 UTC. Proposals must be posted on the forums and meet the updated criteria to be considered for approval.

Without further ado, here are the whitelisted vaults for this week:

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

• Kodiak — Avalon Labs — BERA-AVL-1%

NON-DEX Vaults (Proposer - Utility)

• Dolomite — dHONEY
• Reservoir — drUSD 

All requests for incentive changes on existing reward vaults were approved, with coordination in place to swap out incentives.