Katherine Ross

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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I had a chance to catch up with Smokey the Bera, and there’s a few things I want to chat about this morning. 



The first is the tokenomics upgrade that just happened with BERA, which Smokey explained is designed to make BERA “more, I&#8217;d say, easy to use for people in terms of just thinking, ‘Okay, I&#8217;m someone who is not deep in the weeds, how do I take BERA and do something productive with it?’”



But let me back up — the upgrade basically takes BERA from a token simply used for both staking and gas, and gives it the ability to potentially become a revenue-generating asset.&nbsp;



Right now: Berachain has BERA and BGT.&nbsp;



“The underlying change that we&#8217;ve put forward…is that now a portion of those incentives that were typically flowing towards BGT from the ecosystem projects will actually go towards buying back BERA, and people who choose to stake their BERA will effectively be able to earn their yield from those buybacks effectively. So right now, 100% of all the incentives in the network flow towards BGT, and it will actually be sort of a 33% split flow towards people who are staking their BERA,” he noted. 



“It&#8217;s somewhere between value redistribution and approachability of the asset as a whole. And I think that what that also means is that there are many more applications within the ecosystem that can now do everything — from stockpiling BERA for their treasuries, to sort of building yield loops around BERA to basically using that as the base asset.”



Berachain launched its <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/berachain-mainnet-debuts">mainnet earlier this year</a>, and its token hit a $1 billion market cap. However, the BERA chart in the past three months is on a downtrend.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXczXDTTfLYcog1tcDKy1f4Awz612LOokO4ERI592TCXwX6Bbp8vs7o5AicXksiCCTHx97Iy4ymgUf4sq--duvlsaND0uhwr7GBr6rkpYihO77ojGSOUkfE-Z_mm7G_2oo9wSYWkKg?key=y9Os1WI5YWYnwY9hqjORwA" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: Blockworks Research</figcaption></figure>



In February, after the mainnet launch, <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/flashnotes/berachain-launch">Blockworks Research’s Boccaccio noted</a> that “the market has evolved this cycle, moving away from complex DeFi and TVL-focused protocols in favor of trading functionality and fast chains.”



I asked Smokey about how Berachain in general fits into what crypto investors seemingly want at this point.&nbsp;



“We&#8217;re definitely seeing that the worlds of Web2 and Web3 are smashing together, whether that&#8217;s Treasury vehicles or simply more sophisticated capital allocators looking at the space,” he noted. “I think as we increasingly look at blockchains as businesses, that&#8217;s where what we&#8217;ve been focusing on with proof of liquidity becomes a little bit more interesting.”



For Berachain, it’s about finding how it can increase activity by properly investing its resources.&nbsp;



“The chain itself is sort of generating revenue — slash generating real yields — from the applications building on top of it. The applications themselves are also effectively getting a money multiplier on what they&#8217;re spending in that an application will typically say, ‘Okay, I&#8217;m willing to spend $1 worth of my token…in order to receive…emissions from the chain for the use case within my app that I&#8217;d like to support,’” Smokey said.



“And we think that gets really interesting when it comes to the ecosystem as a whole, because what it really means is that, at the end of the day, the chain is putting its money where its mouth is.”



Smokey sees the tokenomics upgrade as a “foundational” step towards ramping up network activity.&nbsp;



He added that Berachain had a lot of hype going into launch, but faced a different landscape post-TGE now that we’re starting to see more attention paid to businesses that either generate revenue or have onchain sustainability.&nbsp;



With fundamentals in play, Smokey added that Berachain plans to “double down on what we’re good at,” while also leaning into what the “market is currently validating.”



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Berachain

How Berachain’s leaning into ‘what the market is currently validating’

Kate Irwin

This is a segment from The Drop newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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A female-focused crypto community known as the Berabaddies has teamed up with infra firm Concrete to launch a community-yield vault that offers yield farming on Berachain, all with the goal of making DeFi simpler and easier for non-technical traders and those newer to crypto.



Berachain <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/berachain-pengu-burn">launched</a> earlier this year, in February — but the Berabaddies had formed a year prior in February 2024, when Berachain was in testnet. The girl group is separate from the Berachain Foundation and team, and is incubated by Berachain-focused venture studio Honey Jar plus Ursadom Labs.



“Berachain is the community that I found my home in and I found my voice,” Berabaddies founder Keisha, who prefers to only use her first name, told me in an interview.&nbsp;



Keisha said the idea for the Berabaddies came when she had been heavily involved in trading, but found herself missing her best girlfriends when spending countless hours in crypto Discord servers and chat groups full of guys.&nbsp;



The Berabaddies multisig vault is expected to conduct weekly reviews and has a 72-hour withdrawal hold window for security.



“To make money on Berachain right now, you need to understand the parts, the DeFi, how [Proof-of-Liquidity] works specifically for Berachain. You could be a DeFi expert on Ethereum, on any other chain, and then you could come over to Berachain and still have a steep learning curve because there’s so many layers to it,” Keisha said.



“We’re trying to abstract away as much of the risk and as much of the complexity, and just make it super simple. It’s [a] one-click deposit, either HONEY or BERA,” she continued.



BERA is Berachain’s native token, and HONEY is its native stablecoin.



“You shouldn’t have to need to understand 70 complex terms. You shouldn’t need to know that in order to make money,” she added.



I also asked about that <a href="https://x.com/berabaddies/status/1919365528826827023">viral Berabaddies video</a>, the Real Housewives of Berabaddies, that’s 100% satire and has sparked joy — and resentment.



“I waffled a little bit back and forth on posting that video,” Keisha explained. “People are always going to be unhappy with me or unhappy with what the baddies are doing.”



Ultimately, it seems like a lot of viewers missed the point. The goal of the Berabaddies group isn’t to present all women as vapid or shallow. It’s to bring a bit of humor to the timeline and to show all women that there’s a space for you in crypto where you can be yourself.



“Our community, when we have these events, they are for women, but these products can be used by anybody,” Keisha said of the vault. “Our focus and our attention is on the aesthetic and the femininity and the cuteness and making it fun and simple.”



The Berabaddies team is small, with six team members in total and just three to four working on the project full-time, the founder said. But the Berabaddies appeal is clearly there — there are over 900 women in its group chat.



The group is also offering educational resources to help women get careers in crypto, starting with marketing, and also has plans for a Dress-Up game.



“I support Baddies’ rights and wrongs,” Keisha said. “We’re also here for all the Baddies, all the women in this space, for you to have the freedom to express yourself however you see fit.”