vedem

What a day (or two) to be a Bera. Honestly, as I sit down to write this post, I'm still at a bit of a loss for words. The chain wasn't real for so long that, at this point, it almost feels weirder that it is. I'm a little torn because I could certainly write exactly about how I feel, and feed an army of trolls, or I could bullpost into the void and seem like a delusional goof (which I occasionally am). The simple fact is that it's gametime, and the whole team and I are ready to play ball. Over the last couple of years, we've built out an absolutely unmatched community at the apex intersection of the left and the right curve. In the last couple of days, the community has been given the tools they need to succeed. They've got a performant, EVM-identical chain, allowing them to port over existing infrastructure or deployments from other chains, with sub 2s blocktimes and single slot finality for those satisfying transactions. They've got infinite access to most of the blue chip dev tooling that they'd find on Ethereum, for everything from oracles to multisigs and everything in between. They've got the infrastructure and network support of known blue chips like Pendle, Magic Eden, Yearn, Opensea, Euler, Chainlink, and more. They've got resources for their own treasuries, as well as millions of BERA through RFB allocations to incentivize users in the months to come. They've got distribution, whether it's through massive communities built around DeFi products like @InfraredFinance and @KodiakFi, NFT ecosystems spawning around @TheBullas_ and @steadyteddys, or social layers emerging around @berabaddies (who streamed for 24 hours with 60k viewers in the middle of this blood?), @eatsleepyeet, @BlockChain_lol and a number of other unannounced hits. Bonus points for the distribution through the army of folks raging on CT this week. Hyperliquid. And the team continues to be in the trenches every day, answering questions on and off X, supporting builders, spreading the word, and doing everything we can to ensure that the Next Big Thing is built on Berachain. I think in the next couple of weeks, as the full Proof of Liquidity feature set rolls out, user incentives from their favorite applications, and exciting novel dApps + rewards vaults going live on Berachain, we'll get to see whether the Emperor really has clothes. I am endlessly thankful to the entire community and our ecosystem of dapp builders, shitposters, gigabrains, autists, beras and everything in between. We would be nowhere without you and I hope that we've been able to make you proud in some way. I know we've got room to improve and have made mistakes along the way, and we're going to do our absolute best to make that happen. For the non-Bera natives, we welcome you with open arms, and hope that you can find a home amongst the beras, or at least appreciate the endless variety of cool experiments & products to be found in the eco. My DM's are always open for folks looking to learn more. For my team - thank you so much for putting up with me and my stupidity on a daily basis. You guys teach me something new every day, and I'm privileged to work with a group of brilliant devs and indomitable BD beras while building this chain. The market's not pretty. I'm not gonna pretend I'm happy about it, but I'd rather see fairweather friends depart now than worry about them down the road. Berachain has been and continues to be the ride of a life time, from joking about 100 NFTs of bears during COVID, to a multibillion dollar blockchain supporting hundreds of projects and $Bs of TVL. I'm incredibly thankful to be able to spend my time on it. The chain has $3b+ of TVL on it. The chain has dozens of world class applications on it. And most importantly, the chain has the Beras on it. Berachain.