With $42 million in funding and mainnet launch approaching, here's a comprehensive guide to diving deep into the crowded Berachain testnet

2024.02.19

With $42 million in funding and mainnet launch approaching, here's a comprehensive guide to diving deep into the crowded Berachain testnet

This article compiles 5 ways to claim water on the Berachain testnet—no more worries about the landlady cutting off your water!

2024.02.19 - 09:25:34

Berachain

Navigating Web3 tides with focused insights

This article compiles 5 ways to claim water on the Berachain testnet—no more worries about the landlady cutting off your water!

By Peng SUN, Foresight News

Berachain began as a meme with strong community cultural consensus, emphasizing narratives around "liquidity" and "NFTs," and maintaining close ties to the early DeFi project OlympusDAO. Specifically, Berachain originated from an idea within the Bong Bears NFT community, supported by OlympusDAO and its investors, and inspired by OlympusDAO's rebasing mechanism to rebase into new collections: Bond Bears, Boo Bears, Baby Bears, Band Bears, and Bit Bears.

In terms of team composition, Berachain consists of 30 anonymous members including Homme Bera, Dev Bear, Papa Bear, and Smokey the Bera, along with Baloo the Bera—former engineering lead at Mysten Labs—who joined Berachain in January this year (Baloo the Bera joining Berachain).

Following the FTX collapse in November 2022, Berachain began fundraising and completed a $42 million raise at a $420 million valuation in April 2023, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from OKX Ventures, Hack VC, Dao5, Tribe Capital, Shima Capital, Robot Ventures, Goldentree Asset Management, former Dragonfly Capital partner, Celestia founder Mustafa Al-Bassam, Tendermint co-founder Zaki Manian, and 20 other DeFi project founders. At the time of the announcement, Berachain’s ecosystem already had over $250 million in committed total value locked (TVL).

In January this year, Berachain reported that more than 30 native teams were building on its platform, with over 100 additional teams from other networks planning deployments on testnet and mainnet—including Pendle, Redacted, Sudoswap, and Abracadabra. According to Umeshu, BD at The Honey Jar community, Berachain hosted over 70 ecosystem projects in January 2024. Recently, Berachain has also partnered with cross-chain interoperability protocol LayerZero and the NFT project Pudgy Penguin.

Benefiting from strong community cultural alignment, Berachain—currently in the Artio testnet phase—is exceptionally popular. Its faucet allocation dropped from 1 BERA to 0.1 BERA, causing issues such as network congestion, long queues, slow transaction confirmations, and limited allocations for users. Berachain plans to launch its mainnet in Q2, and prior to that, claiming test tokens and interacting with the testnet ecosystem are the only ways to participate. Meanwhile, existing online guides on interacting with the Berachain testnet tend to be overly vertical and fragmented, lacking comprehensive coverage across the broader Berachain ecosystem and community. In light of this, Foresight News provides a concise summary of how to claim BERA and deeply engage with the Bera ecosystem for readers.

Galxe Scoring Tasks

March of the Beras Daily

Over 2.42 million participants; visit any Berachain-related page daily to earn 5 points.

March of the Beras Part One: Onboarding

Over 1.3 million participants; total score of 90 points. Completing basic tasks like following and retweeting on Twitter and interacting with the mainnet earns 70 points. The most difficult part is obtaining the Bera Cub role in Discord, which requires consistent community engagement such as helping newcomers—this task is worth 20 points.

https://galxe.com/Berachain/campaign/GCjGGttCAG

Regarding the Cub role, Smokey the Bera offered some advice—simply put, “Do good deeds without asking about outcomes.”

Note: Holding any of the above six Bera NFTs allows you to claim a corresponding role in Berachain’s Discord server.

Test Token Claiming

The BERA faucet is currently the only entry point for participating in Berachain testnet interactions. Previously traded off-platform at 4 RMB/BERA, the faucet now dispenses only 0.1 BERA every 8 hours (down from 1 BERA), suggesting the off-market price of BERA test tokens will likely rise further. Risks of buying test tokens off-market include potential Sybil detection.

On February 18, 1 BERA on the Berachain testnet was valued at $579.

1. Berachain Foundation

Claim 0.1 BERA every 8 hours (previously 1 BERA).

Website: https://artio.faucet.berachain.com/

2. The Honey Jar

The Honey Jar (THJ) is an unofficial community-driven NFT project within the Berachain ecosystem, built by janitooor.eth—a seed investor in Berachain—and 11 other members. It has collaborated with over 30 projects. Holding a Honey Comb NFT grants access to future airdrops, whitelist spots, early testnet access, bonus rewards, yield boosts, and other benefits from ecosystem projects. While carrying inherent risks due to its unofficial status, THJ holds a strong strategic position within the community.

Website: https://faucet.0xhoneyjar.xyz/badges

Each Bong Bear NFT held grants 0.5 BERA per day, no cap (Bong Bear floor price: 694 ETH)
Each Bond Bear NFT held grants 0.4 BERA per day, no cap (Bond Bear floor price: 78 ETH)
Each Boo Bear NFT held grants 0.3 BERA per day, no cap (Boo Bear floor price: 35 ETH)
Each Baby Bear NFT held grants 0.2 BERA per day, no cap (Baby Bear floor price: 15.5 ETH)
Each Band Bear NFT held grants 0.1 BERA per day, no cap (Band Bear floor price: 8.6 ETH)
Each Bit Bear NFT held grants 0.05 BERA per day, no cap (Bit Bear floor price: 5.4 ETH)
Each Honeycomb NFT held grants 0.05 BERA per day, up to 0.25 BERA daily (maximum 5 Honeycombs can be purchased; floor price 0.5 ETH, max cost 2.5 ETH)
Each Honey Jar NFT held grants 0.05 BERA per day, up to 0.25 BERA daily (max 5 can be bought; floor price 0.0999 ETH, max cost 0.5 ETH)
Each Bera Infinity (including 10 Mirror article NFTs) grants 0.05 BERA per day, up to 0.25 BERA maximum (with 5 Bera Infinity)
Each THJ Platinum Partner NFT grants 0.05 BERA per day (daily cap 1 BERA, max 20 held)
Each THJ Gold Partner NFT grants 0.05 BERA per day (daily cap 0.5 BERA, max 10 held)
Each THJ Silver Partner NFT grants 0.05 BERA per day (daily cap 0.1 BERA, max 2 held)
Each other-tier THJ Partner NFT grants 0.01 BERA per day (daily cap 0.05 BERA, max 5 held)
Each other Bera ecosystem NFT held grants 0.005 BERA per day (daily cap 0.01 BERA, max 2 held)
Complete Tweet Scribe task to earn 0.01 BERA daily
Complete Bot Exposer task to earn 0.01 BERA daily
Complete Meme Artisan task to earn 0.01 BERA daily
Complete Inverse Bera Banter task to earn 0.01 BERA daily
As a THJ Partner member, earn 0.5 BERA daily
Each super set earns 0.5 BERA daily (no cap)
Each Helno Frame NFT earns 0.1 BERA daily
Each wallet pays 1 HONEY on IKB daily to claim 0.1 BERA
Completing various THJ tasks and earning badges grants 0.1 BERA per badge per day.

3. QuickNode

Website: https://faucet.quicknode.com/berachain/artio

(1) Retweet relevant posts to receive 2x test tokens: 0.2 BERA

(2) Pay $10 to upgrade your QuickNode account for 4x rewards (0.4 BERA), priority access, and faster claim speeds.

Note: Can claim once every 12 hours. QuickNode also supports running Berachain nodes.

4. THJ 101 Twitter Mining Campaign

Create educational tweets about The Honey Jar (THJ) or its incubated projects to earn BERA test tokens.

Duration: February 16, 04:00 to March 15, 04:00

Rewards: A total of 100 BERA test tokens, distributed weekly (25 per week). More views = higher score = more BERA. After the event, 1st place receives 1 Honeycomb NFT; ranks 2–5 each receive 1 Honey Jar (Gen2) NFT.

Participants: Currently 12 participants

Eligibility: Limited to users holding Honeycomb NFT or Honey Jar (Gen1 or Gen2) NFTs

Suggested tweet topics: THJ overview, Honeycomb NFT, Honey Jar NFT, THJ Faucet, Fat Bera paper, THJ history, Standard and Paws, Bera Infinity, ApiologyDAO

Tweets must include at least one of the following hashtags:

https://x.postmint.xyz/community/65cd1f0659c00e3f6411e3a8/65cd2f5a59c00e3f6411e72f

5. Developer Application

Developers can apply for additional BERA test tokens by submitting their protocol/project name, project idea, GitHub username, etc.

https://app.deform.cc/form/e4d611a4-ae27-43ee-8ed3-834f1987a18d/

Mainnet Interaction

Berachain DApps include: BEX (exchange), Honey (stablecoin minting/redemption), BEND (lending), BERPS (perpetuals exchange), BGT Station (governance), Beratrail (block explorer).

According to Beratrail data, Berachain mainnet has processed 43.33 million transactions, with 21.55 million in the past 14 days.

BEX

Berachain BEX is Berachain’s native DEX. Website: http://artio.bex.berachain.com.

Swap partial BERA for STGUSDC, WBTC, WETH, etc.
Create new liquidity pools or add liquidity to existing ones under Pool.
Liquidity providers are rewarded with BGT governance tokens, which can be staked.

Issue: High slippage on certain token swaps may result in significant loss of test tokens.

HONEY

Website: https://artio.honey.berachain.com/

Stablecoin swap: Mint HONEY from STGUSDC, or redeem HONEY back into STGUSDC.

BEND

Website: http://artio.bend.berachain.com

Deposit WBTC, WETH to borrow HONEY; lending/borrowing earns BGT rewards.
Deposit HONEY to earn yield, but it cannot be used as collateral to borrow HONEY.

BERPS

Data as of February 18:

Website: http://artio.berps.berachain.com

Berps primarily uses the stablecoin HONEY as the sole token for opening positions.
After selecting Berpetuals and authorizing HONEY, users can go long or short on BTC, ETH, ATOM, TIA with up to 100x leverage.
Under Vault, depositing HONEY mints bHONEY (using a cToken-like model as in Compound). Stakers earn fees from all platform trades, with bHONEY continuously accumulating yield. Staking also earns BGT rewards.

BGT Station

Website: http://artio.station.berachain.com/validators

Currently 103 validator nodes active. No APY or bribe incentives yet—anyone can stake. Official data shows over 100 million BGT test tokens have been staked. Additionally, BGT can be redeemed 1:1 for BERA. After staking, users can vote on new proposals when available.

Ecosystem Projects

According to Umeshu, the Berachain ecosystem currently includes over 70 protocols, 32 The Honey Jar partners, 47 active projects, 30 DeFi projects, 19 NFT projects, 10 gaming projects, and 14 community initiatives.

Below, we highlight select projects to demonstrate how Berachain ecosystem NFTs and The Honey Jar community NFTs are being utilized across multiple platforms.

The Honey Jar

1. NFT Mint

(1) Valentine’s Day NFT – free mint

(2) OOGA BOOGA TICKET

Mint using either 6.9 BERA or 4.2 HONEY—the latter being more cost-effective.

OOGA BOOGA TICKET ownership serves as a gateway to other Berachain ecosystem projects—for example, eligibility for the Beraplug token airdrop requires both Honeycomb and OOGA BOOGA TICKET holdings.

(3) BERA RED ENVELOPE 🐉

Website: https://faucet.0xhoneyjar.xyz/lny

(4) Watch for more NFT mints coming soon

2. THJ Tasks

THJ currently offers tasks such as Cub Initiate, Pudgy Ooga Booga, and Apiology Architect. Each completed task awards a corresponding badge, which can be used to claim BERA test tokens.

3. Badges & Faucet

Owned NFTs and completed tasks convert into badges, which represent the number of BERA test tokens a user can claim.

4. THJ Official Website

Now minting "Beras vs Apes" Jar Gen 1 NFT and "Miladys and Beras" Jar Gen 2 NFT, payable in OHM or ETH.

Beranames

Beranames is Berachain’s official DID and domain protocol. Free mint for 1-year registration; domains registered for 2+ years incur fees based on length, requiring relatively large amounts of BERA.

Beranames announced that mainnet whitelisting is live. To qualify for Berachain mainnet whitelist minting, users must:

Mint a Beraname, and/or
Hold a Berachain NFT, and/or
Hold a Honey Comb NFT

Additionally, Beranames launched a Galxe task worth 80 points.

Kodiak Finance

Kodiak is a decentralized trading protocol on Berachain combining centralized liquidity with automated liquidity management. Kodiak has not yet launched on mainnet.

In February this year, Kodiak raised $2 million in seed funding from Amber Group, Shima Capital, dao5, DoraHacks, and others.

Infrared

Infrared Finance is a Proof-of-Liquidity (PoL) infrastructure supporting liquid staking across the Berachain ecosystem. Infrared has not yet launched on mainnet.

On January 29, Infrared closed a $2.5 million seed round led by Synergis, with participation from NGC Ventures, Tribe Capital, CitizenX, Shima Capital, Dao5, Signum Capital, Ouroboros Capital, Decima, Oak Grove Ventures, DoraHacks, Tenzor Capital, Alex Shin, Albert Chon, Charles Lu, Mr. Block, Chris Spadafora, DCFGod, and others.

Beradrome

Beradrome is a restaking and liquidity marketplace on Berachain featuring ve(3,3) tokenomics with built-in bribery and voting mechanisms.

Its NFT collection is titled "Tour de Berance" with a floor price of 0.1899 ETH. The total supply of Beradrome tokens is 100,000, with airdrops allocated to holders of "Tour de Berance" NFTs.

Bera Punks

Bera Punks is an NFT project within the Berachain ecosystem. Recently minted out, it achieved a total trading volume of 23.12 ETH with 1,055 NFTs sold, ranking #1 on OpenSea’s trending list. Mint price was 0.0085 ETH; current floor price is 0.0314 ETH.

Mint eligibility included:

Bong Bears holders and Bera Punk ETH holders
Honey Comb holders
Beradoge Gen 1 holders
Beramonium NFT holders
Beradrome NFT holders
HoneyCast

Beraplug

Beraplug is a DeFi protocol in the Berachain ecosystem. It initiated the PLUG airdrop on February 15. Eligible recipients include:

Honeycombs holders
Bong Bears and rebase NFT holders
MIJANI holders
Ooga Booga Tickets holders
Beraplug NFT holders

Yeet Cup

Yeet Cup is a fully on-chain Ponzi-style game within the Berachain ecosystem incorporating gambling, gaming, DeFi, and strategy elements. Users stake BERA, and the last player standing wins the entire prize pool. Its game token is YEET. Users generate YEET tokens via "make yeets" actions and can stake YEET to earn BERA.

In mid-March 2024, Yeet Cup will open minting for Yeetards NFTs on Ethereum, with a total supply of 6,666. These NFTs will have utility across multiple ecosystem projects including Yeet, Beramonium, Berapunks, Boink, Beradoge, Mibera, and Goldilocks.

Yeetards NFT minting tiers:

MEGA YEETED criteria: (1) Hold MEGA YEETED role in Discord; (2) Hold Bong Bears or other rebase NFTs; (3) Own all articles in the Yeet Mirror series. Grants 60% mint discount.
YEETED FR criteria: (1) Hold YEETED FR role in Discord; (2) Hold Baka Bears, Beramonium, Honey Combs, Tour de Berance, Berapunks, Beratone Sailcloths, HoneyCast, Beradoge, Honey Crystals, The Llamas, LobsterDAO, Degenscore Beacons. Grants 25% mint discount.
YEETLING: No discount.

Note: The first four Mirror articles from Yeet Cup have already minted 69 NFTs, now available for purchase.

Booba On Bera

Booba On Bera implements ERC404 on Berachain. Smokey The Bera, Berachain’s founder, commented and reposted it. Users can mint using BERA test tokens.

Ramen Finance

Ramen Finance is a (3,3) launchpad protocol in the Berachain ecosystem. On February 21, it will launch a generative NFT collection called Hungrybera (7,500 pieces) on Arbitrum. Priority Mint opens at 22:00 Beijing Time on February 21 (cost: 0.069 ETH); Public Mint opens at 00:00 on February 22 (cost: 0.12 ETH). Hungrybera NFT holders will receive RAMEN token airdrops.

Ramen Finance has gifted 100 RamenList roles and 1,000 RamenOG roles to community members. RamenList holders receive one Priority Mint slot; RamenOG holders receive one Hungrybera NFT airdrop plus one Priority Mint slot.

Additionally, there are raffles for mint slots open to Berachain ecosystem users:

Raffle One: Snapshot taken at 22:00 Beijing Time on February 11. Eligible if holding any of the following NFTs for Hungrybera mint raffle:

Honey Comb NFT holders (1 entry per NFT)
Baka Bears holders (2 entries per NFT)
Bong Bears, Bond Bears, Boo Bears, Baby Bears, Band Bears, Bit Bears NFT holders (6 entries per NFT)

Raffle Two: Berachain Testnet Participants