Layer 1 blockchain
Berachain ticker BERA
Summary
Proof of stake with voting in a fork of CometBFT. The top 69 validators by staked BERA (at least 250,000; effective balance counts up to 10,000,000) propose in proportion to stake, and a block is final once validators with more than two-thirds of voting power precommit it, at a target of about 2 seconds per block. Proof of Liquidity routes new issuance rather than securing consensus: since July 2026 each block mints a fixed 1.705 BERA as wrapped BERA (WBERA), 0.4 to the proposer's operator and 1.305 to reward vaults: governance can first carve out a share for chosen vaults, and the rest follows the proposer's split among governance-approved vaults. BGT, the earlier non-transferable reward and governance token whose boost changed emissions per validator, was deprecated on 8 July 2026. BeaconKit's code says validator rewards, penalties and slashing are not currently enforced. 3671020212227
Design
- System
- Layer 1 blockchainBerachain (mainnet chain ID 80094) is a proof-of-stake layer 1 with an Ethereum-identical execution layer. Its consensus client, BeaconKit, uses a Berachain fork of CometBFT and drives Bera-Reth, a Berachain fork of the Reth execution client, over the Engine API. Proof of Liquidity is an emissions and incentive layer on top of stake-weighted consensus, not a separate consensus resource. It is grouped with Ethereum-family chains because accounts, transactions, contracts and wallets follow Ethereum's formats.
- Settlement family
- Ethereum / EVM
- Scarce resource
- Stake (proof of stake)
- State model
- Accounts
- Finality
- Other
- Who makes blocks
- The top 69 validators by staked BERA form the active set. Entry needs at least 250,000 BERA, and when the set is full a newcomer must hold 10,000 BERA more than the smallest active validator. CometBFT picks proposers by a round robin weighted by voting power, which Berachain's docs describe as proposal probability proportional to stake. One operator can run several validators; the number of distinct operators was not measured.
- Fork choice
- No fork choice in the Nakamoto sense: each height is decided in CometBFT rounds of prevotes and precommits, and a block commits with more than two-thirds of voting power. If a proposer fails, a new round starts at the same height with another proposer. Two conflicting commits would need at least one-third of voting power to sign both, and BeaconKit's code says slashing is not currently enforced. With more than one-third offline or unwilling to sign, the chain stops rather than forking.
Qualifications
- Finality · Partial. Blocks are final once validators with more than two-thirds of voting power commit them, so committed blocks are not reorganized while fewer than one-third misbehave. This is not economic finality in the usual sense: BeaconKit's code says slashing is not enforced, so signing conflicting blocks would not cost stake through the protocol. Liveness also needs more than two-thirds online; coordinated hard forks can still change state, as in November 2025.
- Validator penalties · Not applicable. A comment in BeaconKit's state processor says rewards, penalties and slashing are not currently enforced for validators, and the slashing and penalty steps are commented out of its epoch processing. Berachain's validator lifecycle page says stake serves as a mechanism for penalizing malicious behavior, but the only exits it describes are a voluntary withdrawal or eviction by a higher-staked newcomer, with no slashing step. Validators earn per-block issuance and incentive commission, but no enforced protocol penalty for downtime or double-signing was found.
- Settlement family · Partial. Grouped with Ethereum-family chains because accounts, transactions, contract code and wallet tooling follow Ethereum's. The consensus client is built on a Berachain fork of CometBFT and uses Cosmos SDK libraries, but users do not meet a Cosmos SDK account model, and no IBC connection was reviewed.
- Token roles · Applies. BERA is both the gas coin and the staking token, and Proof of Liquidity issuance is paid in WBERA, a one-to-one wrapped form of BERA. Since 8 July 2026 there is no separate reward token. BUSD, called HONEY until 19 August 2026, is a stablecoin issued by Berachain's contracts, not a gas or staking token.
- Proof of liquidity 2026 change · Applies. The PoL Next upgrade, deployed about 24 hours before the 8 July 2026 Fusaka fork, removed BGT's boost and its role in reward routing and governance; issuance per block became fixed. Material from before mid-2026 describing a three-token model (BERA, BGT and HONEY), including BeaconKit's own README, is out of date.
- Governance · Unknown. Berachain's docs say governance whitelists reward vaults and sets the Dedicated Emission Stream carve-out. Vault requests need a form and a forum proposal that governance stewards review weekly, but after BGT's deprecation the docs do not say who the stewards are, who holds the contracts' admin roles, or how token holders take part.
- Tps · Unknown. Berachain's FAQ gives a formula that derives a rate from the block gas limit and 2-second blocks rather than a measured figure. No classed throughput figure is recorded in this profile.
Tradeoffs
- Emphasizes
- Scalability
- Gives up
- Breadth of block production and stake-backed security. At most 69 validators can be active, each with at least 250,000 BERA; BeaconKit's code says slashing is not enforced, so conflicting votes cost no stake; BeaconKit requires one execution client, Bera-Reth, and Bera-Geth has published no release since January 2026, so a Bera-Reth bug would likely affect every node; and blocks stop whenever more than one-third of voting power is offline or chooses not to sign, which validators did on purpose in November 2025.Scalability here means about 2-second blocks and one-block finality, not a measured capacity figure. Security is not listed as an emphasis because finality holds only while fewer than one-third of voting power misbehaves, BeaconKit's code says slashing is not enforced, and in November 2025 coordinated hard forks froze and then unfroze accounts after an exploit; readers who count one-block BFT finality as a security emphasis may disagree.
- Full node at home
- Demanding 1013Berachain's node quickstart lists 4 physical cores, 32 GB RAM and at least 1 TB of local SSD (more for long-term use; network volumes need at least 1000 IOPS) on Linux x86-64 or ARM64, and suggests restoring a snapshot to speed up the first sync. RPC and validator nodes run the same two clients. Bandwidth needs and current chain size were not stated. A full node looks feasible on upper-end home hardware; joining the 69-validator active set is a separate, stake-gated step.
- Throughput claims
- No classified figure recorded
Scaling layers
No scaling layer recorded in this profile.
Capabilities
| Capability | How it is provided | Notes and sources |
|---|---|---|
| Account abstraction | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Atomic swaps | Unknown | No trust-minimized cross-party swap mechanism on Berachain was reviewed. EVM contracts could implement hash-locked swaps, but none was verified. |
| Authenticated data publication | Unknown | Not yet assessed under this row's current definition. |
| Light clients | Built into the protocolLimited scope | CometBFT commits (BeaconKit): consensus produces what a light client checks, since the CometBFT commits that finalize Berachain blocks carry validator signatures a light client can verify. Limited: no Berachain light client was reviewed, and BeaconKit has no sync committees. 20 |
| Native staking or delegation | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| On-chain governance | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Parallel execution | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Payment or state channels | Unknown | No payment or state channel network settling to Berachain was reviewed. |
| Programmable spending | Native (protocol or core-team software) Earlier definition | Berachain's execution layer is described as identical to Ethereum's EVM, so spend conditions are smart contracts and smart accounts; the Pectra upgrade went live on mainnet in June 2025 and the docs include guides for delegated account code. 11415 |
| Protocol-verified messaging | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Reversible transfers or recovery | Unknown | Not yet assessed under the current definitions; Safe's deployment registry lists its version 1.4.1 smart-account contracts on Berachain (chain ID 80094). Its published contract interface shows a Safe account needs a set number of owners to approve each spend, lets owners be replaced and can enable add-on modules, but no cited source shows a delay or recovery module deployed there, and an owner threshold alone meets neither part of this row. The November 2025 hard forks that froze and then unfroze accounts were one-off interventions, not a path a user can set up. 242540 |
| Rollups | Unknown | No rollup settling to Berachain was reviewed. BeaconKit's overview lists rollup layers among things the framework could be extended with; that is a design option, not a deployed rollup. 12 |
| Shielded transfers | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Signed partial offers | Unknown | Not yet assessed under this row's current definition. |
Reading these values
- How this feature is provided
- Built into the protocol, core-team software or independent software says where a feature lives and who can change it. These are implementation layers, not quality: core-team software is not closer to the protocol than independent software.
- Structured assessment pending
- The shared review has not assessed this feature for any chain yet (Account abstraction, Native staking or delegation, On-chain governance, Parallel execution, Protocol-verified messaging and Shielded transfers). That does not mean it is absent, and a chain’s profile may already describe it.
- Unknown
- The review has not established this for this chain under the current definition; the note beside it says why. Unknown is not absent and not a low score. A feature reads “Not present” only when a source shows it is absent.
- Earlier definition
- Payment or state channels, Programmable spending and Rollups keep the earlier definition until the next fact-check. There, “Native” does not separate the protocol from core-team software, “Ecosystem software” does not say who publishes it, and “Partial” does not say which layer.
- Reading across rows
- The list of capabilities is incomplete. Do not read these rows as a chain leading or lagging overall.
Ecosystem & custody
| Product type | Status | Notes and sources |
|---|---|---|
| Automated market makers | First-partyBEX (Berachain's own exchange, based on Balancer V2's vault design), Kodiak | Berachain's docs call BEX the chain's native exchange, with weighted and stable pools, reached through Berachain's Hub app; its security notice says BEX shares a vulnerability in Balancer V2's vault code. Kodiak's docs describe concentrated and full-range AMMs on Berachain. Liquidity depth was not measured and other venues were not reviewed. Risk: On 3 November 2025 the Balancer V2 exploit reached liquidity pools on BEX, which Berachain's docs say shares Balancer V2's vault vulnerabilities; validators halted the chain and a hard fork froze use of BEX vaults. Berachain's BEX page still carries a January 2025 notice saying deposited funds are safe. 19243839 |
| Issuer-native stablecoins | First-partyBUSD (Bera USD, formerly HONEY) | BUSD is minted and redeemed by Berachain's own contracts against whitelisted collateral (USDC, BYUSD, USDT0 and USDe) and is described as soft-pegged to the dollar and fully collateralized. It was renamed from HONEY on 19 August 2026 at the same contract address. Circle lists no USDC contract on Berachain, and USDT0 is a LayerZero token backed by USDT locked on Ethereum rather than USDT issued directly on Berachain. Risk: BUSD's peg rests on its collateral: Circle does not list Berachain, so its USDC is a bridged form; USDT0 depends on locked USDT; Ethena calls USDe a synthetic dollar backed by crypto and short futures. A basket mode forces proportional redemption when a collateral loses its peg. Governance sets fees and collateral. 8933353637 |
| Algorithmic stablecoins | Unknown | No algorithmic stablecoin with material use on Berachain was reviewed. BUSD is collateral-backed, not algorithmic, although one of its collateral assets (USDe) is a synthetic dollar rather than a reserve-backed coin. 837 |
| Bridges | Established in the ecosystemBerachain Bridge (LayerZero), LayerZero Superbridge, USDT0 (LayerZero token) | Berachain's docs call its own bridge app, powered by LayerZero, the canonical bridge to Berachain, and also point to LayerZero Superbridge for bringing BERA and other assets to the chain. USDT0 lists a Berachain deployment on LayerZero. Circle's cross-chain transfer protocol does not list Berachain. No bridge to Ethereum verified by proofs or by Berachain's own validators was found. Risk: LayerZero transfers are only as safe as the verifier set each token's deployer configures. Berachain's own LayerZero guide warns that bridges set up through its permissionless wrapped-asset deployment choose their own verifiers, and that fewer than two required verifier attestations should be treated as a single point of failure. USDT0's docs say its transfers need all three of its named verifiers. Bridged tokens also depend on assets locked on the source chain. The bridge app showed an automated-traffic check during review, so its terms were not read. 1718343536 |
| Block explorers | ThinBerascan (built by Etherscan's team) | Berachain's docs list Berascan for mainnet and testnet. On 27 September 2026 it was live, credited in its footer to Etherscan's team, and showed about 2-second average block times. A second explorer address found through search (beratrail.io) did not load (not found or access denied) and is not counted, so one explorer was confirmed. Explorer data is provider-indexed, not consensus. 1628 |
| Hardware wallets | ThinTrezor (through MetaMask or Rabby), Ledger (Ledger Wallet support not confirmed) | See custody rows: Trezor lists Berachain but only through third-party wallet apps, not Trezor Suite. Ledger has no Berachain coin page; its asset registry lists Berachain as an Ethereum-family coin, its status page lists a Berachain node, and its open-source wallet code added Berachain behind a feature switch in July 2025, but availability to all users was not confirmed. 29303132 |
Hardware-wallet custody
| Device maker | Status | What users can and cannot do |
|---|---|---|
| Ledger | PartialSame as native: Unknown | Can: Possibly add a Berachain (BERA) account in Ledger Wallet: Ledger's asset registry lists Berachain (chain ID 80094) as an Ethereum-family coin, and its wallet code has a Berachain network behind a feature switchNo Ledger coin or support page for Berachain was found (three coin page addresses returned not found). The evidence is vendor-owned but not user-facing: Ledger's asset registry, its status page listing a Berachain (BERA) node, and a merged wallet code change from July 2025 that added Berachain behind a feature switch, off by default in the code and set remotely. Whether that switch is on for all users, and which device app signs, were not confirmed, so this is recorded as partial rather than native. 303132 |
| Trezor | Through an intermediaryMetaMask or Rabby (third-party wallet apps)Same as native: No | Can: Use a Trezor Safe 3, Safe 5 or Safe 7 with Berachain through MetaMask or Rabby, which Trezor's Berachain page lists Cannot: Manage Berachain in the Trezor Suite app, which Trezor's page marks as not supportedTrezor's page lists a single network, Berachain; older Trezor models and signing of contract interactions were not reviewed. 29 |
Public data
iKnow Blockchain has no public-data lookups for Berachain yet. This is a limit of the service, not a statement about the network.
| Lookup | Status | What it covers and its limits |
|---|---|---|
| Address or account | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
| Tokens and assets | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
| NFTs | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
| Transactions | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
Sourced developments
Developments: Review overdue Reviewed Sep 27, 2026; next review was due Oct 7, 2026, 12:00 UTC.
Publication date · newest first
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HONEY stablecoin renamed Bera USD (BUSD)
Berachain changed its stablecoin's name and symbol from HONEY to Bera USD (BUSD) on 19 August 2026. The contract address stayed the same, so balances, approvals and integrations carried over with no migration, swap or claim.
- Implementation:name and symbol changed at the existing contract
- Release:Done
- Activation:effective 2026-08-19
Sources: Berachain docs — BUSD Token (external site) · Berachain docs — Frequently Asked Questions (external site)
-
Osaka1 fork set a 1 gwei minimum base fee from 5 August 2026
Bera-Reth v1.4.3 announced the Osaka1 hard fork for 5 August 2026 at 16:00 UTC, enforcing a network-wide minimum base fee and minimum blob base fee of 1 gwei each. The release notes say fees at these floors are burned rather than paid to the proposer. Operators were told to run v1.4.4, released the same day, which restored a transaction-pool tip check. BeaconKit's notes for the fork say Osaka1 changed only the execution layer, so the consensus client did not need an upgrade.
- Implementation:Bera-Reth v1.4.3, superseded by v1.4.4
- Release:Released
- Activation:live on mainnet since 2026-08-05 per Berachain's upgrade table
Sources: Berachain (GitHub) — bera-reth v1.4.3 (Osaka1) (external site) · Berachain docs — Protocol Features (upgrade timeline) (external site) · Berachain (GitHub) — Bera-Reth releases (external site) · Berachain (GitHub) — BeaconKit v1.4.2-rc.0 (Osaka1 on Bepolia) (external site)
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PoL Next replaced BGT with fixed WBERA issuance alongside the Fusaka fork
Berachain's PoL Next upgrade deployed about 24 hours before the Fusaka hard fork, which activated on 8 July 2026 at 16:00 UTC. It deprecated BGT, removed the boost curve and BGT governance, and fixed issuance at 0.4 WBERA per block to the proposer's operator and 1.305 WBERA to reward vaults. Incentives net of validator commission now accrue to BERA stakers through sWBERA. Fusaka brought Ethereum's Osaka changes to Berachain's execution layer.
- Implementation:audit reports by Zenith and Cantina are linked from the changelog
- Release:Released
- Activation:deployed about 24 hours before Fusaka, which activated 2026-07-08 16:00 UTC; BGT deprecated 2026-07-08
Sources: Berachain docs — BGT Token (external site) · Berachain docs — What's New (Proof of Liquidity changelog) (external site) · Berachain docs — Protocol Features (upgrade timeline) (external site) · Berachain (GitHub) — bera-reth v1.4.1 (Fusaka) (external site) · Berachain (GitHub) — BeaconKit mainnet spec.toml (chain 80094) (external site)
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Berachain halted, then used hard forks to freeze and unfreeze accounts after a BEX exploit
After the Balancer V2 exploit of 3 November 2025 reached liquidity pools on BEX, which Berachain's docs say shares Balancer V2's vault vulnerabilities, validators coordinated to halt the chain while the core team prepared a hard fork. Bera-Reth v1.2.0, released on 4 November, carried the Prague3 fork, which its notes say prevents the exploiter from stealing user funds and freezes use of BEX vaults. Bera-Reth v1.3.0, released on 7 November, carried Prague4, scheduled for 12 November 2025 at 16:00 UTC, which undid the account and transfer freezes.
- Implementation:Bera-Reth v1.2.0 (Prague3) and v1.3.0 (Prague4)
- Release:Released
- Activation:Prague3 activation time not stated in its release notes; Prague4 scheduled for 2025-11-12 16:00 UTC
Sources: Berachain (GitHub) — bera-reth v1.2.0 (Prague3 emergency hard fork) (external site) · Berachain (GitHub) — bera-reth v1.3.0 (Prague4 hard fork) (external site) · The Block — Berachain halts network to conduct emergency hard fork amid $128 million Balancer exploit (external site)
Topics your AI can explain
Your AI can explain these topics for Berachain through the connection, with sources.
Known gaps
What this profile's review did not establish:
- BeaconKit's code says slashing and penalties are not enforced, while Berachain's validator lifecycle page says stake serves to penalize malicious behavior; the docs do not reconcile the two, and whether CometBFT evidence of double-signing leads to any action (for example removal by governance) was not found.
- Who holds governance roles over reward vault whitelisting, the Dedicated Emission Stream and BUSD collateral after BGT's deprecation was not documented in the pages reviewed.
- Operator concentration, whether the 69-slot active set is full, and how stake is spread were not measured.
- Current node guides and BeaconKit's README name only Bera-Reth as the execution client, while one docs page still mentions Bera-Geth. Bera-Geth shipped the November 2025 forks but its last release is from January 2026, with none for the July 2026 Fusaka fork; whether any second client can follow mainnet now was not confirmed.
- Bandwidth needs and current chain size for a full node were not stated in the docs.
- Ledger Wallet support is inferred from Ledger's asset registry, status page and wallet source code, where Berachain sits behind a feature switch; no Ledger coin or support page for Berachain was found.
- No rollup, channel or sidechain settling to Berachain was reviewed, so the scaling list is empty; this is not a finding that none exist.
- Atomic swaps, algorithmic stablecoins, light clients and exchange venues beyond BEX and Kodiak were not reviewed.
- The length of the November 2025 halt and how recovered funds were returned come from secondary reports or an unreadable social post, not a primary page read for this review.
- Which bridge carries USDC and BYUSD to Berachain, and the verifier settings of each LayerZero token, were not reviewed.
- BUSD's token decimals were not stated on the pages reviewed.
Sources
Oldest dated source check: Source checked Sep 27, 2026 Next check due Oct 27, 2026.
- What is Berachain? (external site)
- What's New (Proof of Liquidity changelog) (external site)
- Block Production & Rewards (external site)
- PoL Governance (external site)
- BERA Token (external site)
- BGT Token (external site)
- Honeypaper (external site)
- BUSD Token (external site)
- Frequently Asked Questions (external site)
- Node Architecture (external site)
- Validator Lifecycle (external site)
- BeaconKit Consensus (external site)
- Quickstart: Run a Node (external site)
- Protocol Features (upgrade timeline) (external site)
- EIP-7702 basics (external site)
- Connect to Berachain (external site)
- How to Get $BERA (external site)
- Bridging ERC20 with LayerZero V2 (external site)
- What Is BEX? (external site)
- BeaconKit README (external site)
- BeaconKit state_processor.go (external site)
- BeaconKit mainnet spec.toml (chain 80094) (external site)
- BeaconKit go.mod (external site)
- bera-reth v1.2.0 (Prague3 emergency hard fork) (external site)
- bera-reth v1.3.0 (Prague4 hard fork) (external site)
- Bera-Geth releases (external site)
- Byzantine Consensus Algorithm (external site)
- BeraScan: Berachain block explorer (external site)
- Berachain wallet (external site)
- Ledger Status (external site)
- Ledger crypto-assets registry: Berachain (external site)
- Berachain, hyperevm, sei evm (pull request 10772) (external site)
- USDC Contract Addresses (external site)
- CCTP supported blockchains (external site)
- USDT0 deployments (external site)
- USDT0 developer documentation (external site)
- Ethena documentation (external site)
- Kodiak documentation (external site)
- Berachain halts network to conduct emergency hard fork amid $128 million Balancer exploit (external site)
- SafeL2 v1.4.1 deployments by chain ID (safe-deployments registry) (external site)
Report an error
Found something wrong or out of date? Reporting is free, and every chain goes through the same process. Published corrections appear in the public log.
Funding disclosure
Funding disclosures appear here when an upkeep arrangement exists, in the form “Upkeep funded by [name]; verdicts unaffected.” The funder ledger has not been published yet. Neutrality & funding