The Origins
The story of Berachain is quite unique, as it began in the trenches of web3.
Last updated
The story of Berachain is quite unique, as it began in the trenches of web3.
Last updated
It all started in the summer of 2021 on the Discord channels of the renowned Olympus DAO and other DeFi projects. It was here that , one of the co-founders of Berachain, began discussing his project.
At that point, the project absolutely wasn't a blockchain aiming to revolutionize PoS and become the most anticipated L1 of the year. Instead, it was just another NFT collection — well, not quite like any other. It featured bears smoking bongs launched by the three pseudonymous co-founders: Papa Bear, Dev Bear, and SmokeyTheBera.
100 completely stoned bears were minted at 0.069420 ETH (about $225 at that time).
After the mint, the vibe was similar to most NFT projects: a team that was often AFK and holders who were skeptical about the future of their degen investments (you'll quickly understand that those who sold here made one of the worst mistakes of their lives).
Over the weeks, the Olympus DAO community embraced the collection, and the excitement began to build.
The Olympus DAO community is one of the most respected in the DeFi ecosystem, and more and more people have started using the bears as their pfps.
On October 16, 2021, the project announced the launch of a second NFT collection, "Bond Bears," featuring a concept and roadmap based on rebasing.
To understand the origins of Berachain, it is essential to grasp their NFT rebases: Each new collection of Bears would distribute a free NFT to each holder of the previous collections, with a portion available via public mint.
The second collection, Bond Bears, distributed 100 NFTs to each Bong Bears holder, plus 26 via public mint. The third collection, Boo Bears, distributed 100 NFTs to Bong Bears holders, 126 to Bond Bears holders, and 44 via public mint. This process continued until there were six NFT collections in total:
Bong Bears - 107 supply - 100E last sale
Bond Bears - 126 supply - 57E last sale
Boo Bears - 271 supply - 16E
Baby Bears - 569 supply - 7E
Band Bears - 1160 supply - 4.5E
Bit Bears - 2278 supply - 3E
We haven't calculated it, but if you had minted the first 'Bong Bears' NFT at $225 and held every rebase collection received, you'd be a comfy millionaire.
The final and unique rebase collection, Epoch 7, will be minted on the Berachain mainnet, and your life’s goal should be to mint this bozo.
Over time, these collections gained significant value as the project progressed towards building a new blockchain.
The sixth rebase, the most recent collection to date, called "Bit Bears," is the most 'accessible', with a floor price of 3 ETH.
Why are they so expensive? Here are a few reasons:
Culture/Provenance: These collections have been around since 2021 and are part of history, alongside other OG NFT collections.
Financial Utility: Like Pudgy and other prominent ETH projects, one of the most significant financial utilities is receiving airdrops from protocols as a holder. The fact is many protocols, memecoins, and NFTs will offer airdrops, utilities, whitelists, or other benefits to holders of Berachain’s official NFT collections on the mainnet.
In November 2021, a team member mentioned "Bera Chain" for the first time.
In the following months, the community strengthened through Discord hangouts, poker games, discussions about the collapsing market, alpha sharing, and brainstorming on how to improve DeFi ecosystem.
Smokey, co-founder of Berachain, says that the pivot from Bong Bears NFTs to launching a fully-fledged layer-1 blockchain is not so far-fetched: "Bong Bears bootstrapped a community of DeFi enthusiasts."
In May 2022, Berachain raised $500k from Olympus DAO in a strategic partnership, in exchange for 2% of the total supply of the $BERA token. It was probably the best investment they could make lmao.
Berachain Discord, which opened in April 2022, has continued to build a strong community with its unique retarded vocabulary, like "henlo" and "ooga booga."
This community culture undoubtedly helped with their two recent funding rounds ($42M + $100M), alongside their innovative technology introducing a new blockchain consensus, Proof Of Liquidity.
Series A - April 2023:
Berachain raised $42 million at a $420.69 million valuation. The round was led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Hack VC, dao5, Tribe Capital, Shima Capital, CitizenX, and Robot Ventures.
Series B - April 2024:
Berachain raised $100 million (valuation undisclosed). Framework Ventures and the Abu Dhabi branch of Brevan Howard Digital co-led the round, with additional participation from Polychain Capital, Hack VC, Samsung Next, Laser Digital from Nomura Group, Hashkey Capital, and Nomad Capital.
Today, Berachain still doesn’t have a marketing team and has relied on its community for growth since the beginning.
This community is notably composed of OGs, whales, builders (and farmoors on the testnet).
But most importantly, it’s a community with its own & unique culture. And that's what we'll be talking about in the next part; read on to learn more bozo.
Airdrop: Many expect an airdrop of $BERA tokens for these collections, although it has never been officially confirmed by the team. The general consensus is that 3 to 5% of the total $BERA supply will be airdropped to these NFTs. The community even created a site to estimate the airdrop based on various factors:
(PS: You might know , one of the biggest farmers on Blur and NFT whales; now you know which collection his PFP belongs to.)
