berachain

The Berachain mainnet PoL Next has officially launched, and the contract upgrade marks the first step in transitioning from the original BGT model to a more simplified and sustainable incentive system centered around sWBERA. The complete transition is divided into two phases: on July 7, the contract changes will take effect, and WBERA will begin to be issued as a replacement for BGT; on July 8, the hard fork will completely stop BGT production, and the old mechanism will officially close.After the transition is complete, BGT LST Reward Vaults and BGT LST incentives will gradually be phased out in the coming days. The official will provide migration tools for all users on the Portfolio page of the Hub, but the migration will not be executed automatically; users will need to manually exchange BGT and BGT LSTs for sWBERA. Early APR may fluctuate, with an estimated maximum increase of up to 3 times the original. The hard fork time is July 8 at 16:00 UTC (12:00 PM EDT).

The Berachain Foundation issued a warning on platform X that the Wasabi Protocol has triggered a cross-chain security incident due to the leakage of the deployer's private key, affecting multiple blockchains including Berachain.To prevent the spread of risk, Berachain has suspended and blacklisted all affected Wasabi Reward Vaults within the network, immediately stopping the distribution of BGT staking rewards to compromised contracts and blocking the flow of new BGT into the damaged contracts. The official request for all users who have interacted with Berachain and Wasabi is to immediately revoke token authorization for the specified contracts to avoid the risk of asset theft. Berachain also emphasized that the BGT reward funds within the native RewardVaults are safe and users can claim them normally; this incident does not affect core ecological rights.

According to official news, Bera Labs has initiated a proposal aimed at reducing the BGT inflation rate to 5%. The proposal states that currently, Berachain mints BGT at an annual target rate of approximately 10%, while the actual inflation rate so far this year averages around 8%. A high inflation rate is appropriate during the network validator community and the early application ecosystem launch phase, but as the ecosystem matures and a new macroeconomic environment forms, it is recommended to reduce the BGT inflation rate to about 5% to minimize unnecessary dilution, enhance sustainability and emission efficiency, while remaining competitive with other L1s.This proposal will not modify the reward mechanism, treasury allocation logic, or any liquidity proof (PoL) functional components.The proposal also indicates that the inflation rate will be further reduced during 2026 and 2027, bringing it closer to Ethereum. Additionally, the team is evaluating long-term improvements to PoL, aiming to create sustainable protocol-level revenue that will stimulate greater value for BGT over time.

According to the announcement from Huobi HTX, Huobi HTX will open the deposit service for IR on December 17 at 16:00 (GMT+8). The IR/USDT spot trading will open on December 17 at 20:00 (GMT+8). The withdrawal service for IR will open on December 19 at 20:00 (GMT+8). Meanwhile, Huobi leverage will introduce IR/USDT (10X) isolated margin trading on December 17 at 20:00 (GMT+8).It is reported that Infrared Finance is an application based on the liquidity proof consensus mechanism of Berachain, providing liquidity staking, validator infrastructure, and automated PoL vaults as its core infrastructure layer, which constitute the pillars of the chain's revenue and governance economy.

According to the official announcement, the Berachain liquidity staking protocol Infrared has released details of the IR token airdrop. This airdrop aims to reward early community members who have continuously used Infrared during the points program, participants of the Boyco pre-deposit event, and users who actively engage in community activities (such as Discord interactions, user surveys, community events, testnet participation, etc.).The IR token has three main functions: staking to earn sIR for governance voting rights; participating in profit sharing through buybacks; and token issuance to optimize protocol efficiency and revenue. Users can pre-claim the airdrop through the CEX pre-deposit process, with the three centralized exchanges for pre-deposit being: Bitget, Gate, and KuCoin.Important dates are as follows: the centralized exchange pre-deposit window opens on December 16 at 1:00 (UTC+8), the centralized exchange pre-deposit window closes on December 17 at 16:00 (UTC+8), and the IR token officially launches. All claims will permanently close on January 12, 2026, at 08:00 (UTC+8).

According to market news, as of the end of the second quarter of 2025, the crypto venture capital firm Framework Ventures, which co-led the Berachain Series B financing with Brevan Howard Digital's Nova fund, holds 21,145,476 BERA tokens, with a total acquisition cost of approximately 72.4 million dollars. Based on its average purchase price of 3.42 dollars, this portion of BERA will result in a paper loss of over 50.8 million dollars for Framework at current prices. Framework Ventures did not respond to multiple requests for comment.Previous reports indicated that Berachain's privacy terms were exposed, claiming that Brevan Howard's 25 million dollar investment could be refunded after the TGE, which other investors were not aware of. In response to reports stating that "Nova Digital has the right to refund the 25 million dollar investment," Berachain's co-founder stated that it is neither accurate nor complete, and Nova remains one of the largest token holders.

The co-founder of Berachain, Smokey the Bera, responded on social media to reports that "Berachain was exposed for providing a $25 million refund right to Nova Digital in its Series B funding," stating that the report is "neither accurate nor complete."Smokey the Bera clarified the details of Brevan Howard's investment agreement: Brevan Howard co-led Berachain's Series B funding a year ago through its Nova fund in Abu Dhabi, with investment terms identical to those of other investors. Nova's compliance team requested additional terms to mitigate the risks of TGE failure and failure to list, leading both parties to sign an additional commercial agreement that includes a commitment to provide liquidity post-network launch.Smokey the Bera emphasized that Nova remains one of Berachain's largest token holders, and may even be the largest holder. They hold locked BERA tokens obtained from the Series B funding and liquid BERA tokens purchased from the open market, continuously increasing their holdings amid market fluctuations.

According to The Block, Unchained columnist Jack Kubinec disclosed in a recent report that Brevan Howard's venture capital investment in Berachain is nearly "zero risk." Documents made public this Monday show that Berachain granted Brevan's crypto investment subsidiary Nova Digital a special right—a one-year refund guarantee on its $25 million Series B funding. This means that despite Brevan co-leading a $69 million funding round for Berachain at a valuation of $1.5 billion, it can still recover its entire investment after the token generation event.It is reported that this right will remain effective until February 6, 2026. Kubinec pointed out in the report: "Such refund clauses completely shield Brevan's fund principal from risk, which is fundamentally different from traditional venture capital models. If Berachain's BERA token performs well, the fund will achieve excess returns; if the token underperforms, the fund can exercise the refund right." Currently, the trading price of the BERA token is about $1, down approximately 67% from Brevan's investment cost of $3. According to data from The Block, the fully diluted valuation of the token is now $536.7 million. The Series B funding was led by Framework Ventures, with participation from Arrington Capital, Hack VC, Polychain, and Tribe Capital. Berachain also completed a $42 million Series A funding in 2023. It is still unclear whether other investors also have refund rights.

Berachain announced on the X platform the addresses and token balance information affected by the BEX/Balancer V2 vulnerability, including addresses that directly deposited BEX and those that deposited through treasury providers like Infrared.Berachain stated that there may be slight discrepancies in the digital calculation of the returned funds and plans to launch a claims page later this week. However, the returned funds will not include the amounts provided to white hat hackers. They will continue to conduct checks and gather feedback regarding the distribution of recovered funds until the final recovery claims take effect.

Berachain co-founder Smokey stated that due to the freezing of the BEX exchange rate, there are still anomalies in some annual interest rates and pricing in the Hub. Some users encounter a 500 error message when accessing the Honey page, which seems to be related to geographic location. The Honey SC/Mint and exchange functions are operating normally, and the front-end team has been arranged to synchronize the fix for this error so that all users experiencing this issue can access it properly.

The Berachain Foundation announced early this morning that approximately $12.8 million in stolen funds from the BEX / Balancer V2 vulnerability has been fully recovered and returned to the foundation's deployment wallet.The team expressed gratitude to the white hat hackers who assisted in recovering the funds and plans to lift the malicious tags on their addresses, considering issuing a bounty as a token of appreciation. Currently, all functions of BEX (including exchanges, withdrawals, deposits, etc.) remain restricted, while the minting and redemption of HONEY have been restored. Due to the suspension of BGT and incentives in the past 24 hours, the on-chain APR may show anomalies. Regarding the allocation of the affected funds, the Berachain core team is developing a system to attribute and distribute them to the original user addresses one by one. Deposits of BEX that were not affected by the vulnerability are currently also unable to be withdrawn; the team stated that this is a precautionary measure and is closely monitoring the progress of Balancer's subsequent investigation to ensure that all user funds can be safely returned as soon as possible.

Berachain announced that all funds lost due to the BEX / Balancer v2 vulnerability (approximately $12.8 million) have been returned to the Berachain Foundation Deployer address. The blockchain has resumed operation.The minting/redeeming function of HONEY has also been restored accordingly, but all BEX functions are restricted, including redemption, withdrawal, and deposits. For those with large pools of stolen funds from independent depositors, the Berachain core team is currently developing a system that will return deposits to their original addresses and allocate them to users accordingly. The team reminds that users with deposits in BEX that have not been attacked are temporarily unable to withdraw. This is out of caution, as the cause of the Balancer vulnerability has not yet been fully determined.

The Berachain Foundation stated on the X platform: "Most key partners are ready, except for one oracle provider.In light of recent issues related to Stream/Elixir, oracle providers have faced immense pressure in the past 24 hours. They are expected to go live within hours. Once they are live and the chain starts generating blocks, we will provide updates here again.In the meantime, the team has verified and received pre-signed transactions from white hat hackers currently holding the stolen BEX funds. Once the chain resumes block generation, these transactions will transfer the BEX funds from the 'white hat' party to the foundation deployer's wallet without any further action required from the 'white hat' party. If we successfully recover the funds, we will inform the community of the latest situation. We are in the final stages of restoring the ecosystem to normal operation while making every effort to ensure security."

Berachain posted on the X platform that the hard fork upgrade files have been distributed, and many validator nodes have also been upgraded. They hope that core infrastructure partners required for on-chain operations (such as liquidation oracles) will ensure that they update their RPC, as this is currently the main obstacle to restoring on-chain operations. After completing the core service RPC requests, they will coordinate with bridges, CEX partners, custodians, and others to restore services.Berachain also added that they are currently in communication with BEX fund holders, who is an MEV bot operator and claims to be a white hat hacker, willing to pre-sign a series of transactions to return funds after the upgrade, which is expected to be returned to Berachain's deployment address.

The Berachain Foundation stated, "The validator nodes have coordinated to pause the Berachain network to allow the core team to execute an emergency hard fork to address the vulnerability issues related to Balancer V2 on BEX. This network pause is planned, and the network will resume operation shortly."

The Berachain Foundation posted on the X platform: "In the past 45 minutes, we have been made aware of the vulnerability attack that Balancer is experiencing and are taking preventive measures to avoid any potential damage to the Berachain ecosystem (especially BEX). In the meantime, operations related to HONEY minting and the BEX liquidity pool/treasury have been suspended. We will provide updates on the progress soon."