Original author:Smokey the Bera, Berachain joint creation

Original compilation: Leo, BlockBeats

Original compilation: Leo, BlockBeats

Yesterday, the Layer 1 public chain Berachain announced the completion of $42 million in financing. Its co-founder Smokey the Bera wrote an article on "Berachain's development so far", compiled by BlockBeats as follows:

About a year and a half ago, Papa and I joked about making a smoking bear NFT. Today, Berachain announced that it has raised $42 million from some of the best crypto investors and angel investors in the crypto world to build the first protocol that truly combines liquidity and security.

It's been a hasty journey, and it's just the beginning of Berachain. First, a sentimental history lesson from Smokey the Bera.

Papa (its NFT team) and I started investing in crypto in 2015, we started to speculate in 2017 and 2018, played all the shitcoins, and then came the summer of DeFi. We have experienced some chain and ecological ups and downs, and spent a lot of time in 2021 and 2022 on alt-Layer rotation. A common cycle emerges - chain initiation > eco-fund > DEX & lending market > TVL pump > emission exhaustion > chain deed.

No matter how decentralized, scalable or secure these chains are - no matter how long it takes to finalize, no matter how interoperable, without liquidity, the chain will quickly become a "ghost town". At the same time, we have reached 7-digit TVL in multiple ecosystems on the chain, and more than 100 times the number of validators. There is no doubt that the network is safe-but what is the cost?

Liquidity is indeed the lifeblood of DeFi, but beyond that, protocol activity matters, and Beras is picking up speed when we realize that. We inadvertently started a community of thousands of smart but level-headed DeFi enthusiasts who would take the risk of buying a Smoking Bear NFT, and God knows why.

Retail investors and developers are the perfect interview group as we test our thesis and explore their value in the on-chain ecosystem. With feedback from the community, and prolonged engagement with Papa, Dev, and Homme, Proof of Liquity emerged.

An outstanding system that allows multiple permissioned capital sources to contribute to network security while also serving as a source of liquidity, infusing a set of DeFi legos: a spot AMM, a perpetual futures trading platform, and a stablecoin lending platform.

As the fees of these core “appchain”-like primitives bring value to the protocol layer, we see the start of a flywheel that incentivizes protocols and validators to participate in network governance and liquidity provision through real incentives.

Dapps can leverage this liquidity routing environment to bootstrap their own ecosystems and contracts, Berachain becomes the first chain to provide liquidity to its builders and upends the current status quo dominated by donations and fake ecological funds. The characteristics of Berachain are:

- systematically build liquidity;

- Incentive protocol and validators to participate in the chain infrastructure;

- Redefine the cost of bribery;

- Solve the problem of pledge concentration;

Berachain solves some of the most important problems for DeFi and the entire blockchain space. We have the opportunity to extract assets from each EVM and Cosmos chain to build the deepest and most capital efficient capital pool in existence, providing users with CEX-like capital depth and speed, and CEX transparency and customizability on-chain ecology.

Wish I could attribute half of the ideas and visions mentioned in this article to me. But I just do henlos and ooga boogas. The vision for Berachain emerged from the team's iterations, sleepless nights, empty Red Bull cans and scribbles on whiteboards throughout the months. Of course, all this is also due to the down-to-earth brothers Bera.

Most importantly, the whole team came together because of the community, thousands of crazy mfs creating pastas on Discord, even building Dapps without a testnet, the initial VC team, playing with Dev People of Warzone, people who know Papa exists!

The only bro who was crazy enough to string dozens of projects into one game, the trade VC asked me about it during a bank run while minting 16,420 NFTs. I cherish your eccentric characters, the legion of Bera alts, and the Bera beliefs that have formed.

Finally, thanks to our investors for trusting a chain run by smoking bear jpegs, we have a lot of great ideas that are becoming more and more possible with your help.