Berachain to Launch Mainnet and Airdrop on Feb. 6

Berachain, an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible Layer 1 network, has set Thursday, Feb. 6, as the official launch date for its public mainnet and token generation event (TGE).

The blockchain’s native token, BERA, will be released when the mainnet goes live, with tokenomics and eligibility checkers to be released on Feb. 5.

Traders and investors presume that a significant portion of the BERA supply will go to holders of its ecosystem NFT collections, such as Bong Bears, Bond Bears, and Boo Bears. The Bond Bears NFT collection spiked by 38% today as holders delisted their NFTs, bringing the floor to 103 ETH, or $288,000. The last Bond Bear sale took place on Feb. 3 for 69 ETH, or $193,000.

The ecosystem’s most expensive NFTs are the Bong Bears, which tout a 330 ETH floor price, with the last sale taking place on Dec. 30 for 150 ETH, or $420,000.

Berachain’s ecosystem is designed around its Proof-of-Liquidity mechanism, a multi-token model intended to align participants' and developers' interests and drive value to the chain via the applications built on it.

The model features BERA, the chain’s native token, and BGT, a non-transferrable token used for governance and ecosystem rewards through staking. BGT can be redeemed 1:1 for BERA, but BERA can not be converted back to BGT.

The idea behind the two-token system is that BERA and BGT’s relationship creates balanced incentives between redeeming BERA and utilizing it in the ecosystem, according to the chain’s Honeypaper.

Despite many investors' high hopes, other users on the sidelines seem less excited.

WarDaddyCapital, a research analyst at Protecc, said, “For being a 'hyped' launch, I'm interested to track if any liquidity gets sucked out of existing ecosystems for the new and shiny chain. Maybe I'm fading, but I don't have high expectations.”

Berachain raised a total of $142 million across two rounds in 2023 and 2024, with participation from venture capital heavyweights like Polychain Capital, Framework Ventures, Hack VC, and HashKey Capital.