Berachain Begins $1.1 Billion BERA Airdrop as Mainnet Launches

Berachain launched its “proof-of-liquidity” layer-1 blockchain Thursday while commencing its BERA token airdrop to the community—with the value of the airdrop allotments hitting $1.17 billion at Thursday's peak price.

Trading for BERA is now live on major centralized exchanges including Binance, OKX, and Coinbase. The token briefly surged to a peak of $14.83 after launch, but has fallen approximately 49% to $8.00 at the time of writing.

The network, which spun out of a 2021 Ethereum NFT project, raised more than $100 million to bring its chain and novel consensus mechanism to fruition.

“Feels surreal,” pseudonymous co-founder Smokey the Bera posted on X (formerly Twitter). “Team and I will be in the trenches busting bugs and helping teams get set up to win on Berachain.”

The mainnet launch occurred around 8am ET with airdropped BERA, the network’s native gas token, already in eligible users’ wallets except in instances where use of a bridge or an exchange claim was required.

Because Berachain is “EVM-identical," most popular Ethereum Virtual Machine wallet providers (like MetaMask or Rabby) allow users to easily add Berachain support to start interacting with the network and gain access to their tokens.

Of the 15.75% of the total BERA supply (79 million tokens) set aside for the airdrop, at least 11.15%—or 55.75 million tokens—are directly available to users today, providing more than $800 million to recipients at the peak trading price so far Thursday.

What Is Berachain? The 'Proof-of-Liquidity' Blockchain and BERA Airdrop

Founded by three pseudonymous developers, Berachain, a layer-1 blockchain set to compete with Ethereum and Solana, launched its mainnet on February 6, 2025. The network utilizes a new consensus mechanism called proof-of-liquidity, which aims to better align the incentives of network participants while improving security of the chain.  The new EVM-identical blockchain aimed to solve the “cold start problem” that most early blockchains face, providing users and early applications with “meaningful...

The additional 4.6% of the total supply for the airdrop allocation is reserved for select social media users, teams, and applications that earned a share via the “Request for Broposal,”an incentive program for applications and communities held by the chain.

The final airdrop recipients will be those that deposited to Boyco, the network’s pre-launch liquidity platform. Boyco participants will receive their rewards within 30-90 days, based on the markets they participated in. 

At the peak price so far of $14.83, the BERA airdrop would grant more than $1.1 billion to the community when all parties have claimed.

Dogecoin, XRP and Cardano Down 26% as Bitcoin Sinks Again

Bitcoin is in the red again Thursday and has fallen by almost 9% over the last week—but nearly every other asset in the top 10 coins by market cap (excluding dollar-pegged stablecoins) is down by double that mark or more, with three of the coins plunging by approximately 26% each in the last week. XRP, Dogecoin, and Cardano are the biggest losers at the top of the crypto pile over the past seven days. The Ripple-linked XRP has plunged 26% to $2.33 over the last week, falling from above the $3 ma...

“Airdrops are all about rewarding the community that helped your project win,” Smokey the Bera posted on Wednesday. 

Beyond the initial airdrop, an additional 65.5 million BERA tokens are set aside for users, developers, and applications as part of the network’s “future community incentives” allocation. A full tokenomics breakdown and eligibility checker were launched by the network on Wednesday. 

BERA is one of three tokens in the Berachain ecosystem, alongside its governance token BGT and HONEY, its native stablecoin.

Edited by Andrew Hayward