Interview with Berachain co-founder. Evolving from an NFT community to Layer 1 and building a positive flywheel effect.

Wublock’s interview with pseudonymous co‑founder Smokey traces how Berachain evolved from a meme‑driven NFT community of cartoon bears into a full Layer 1 blockchain with its own economic and governance model. The project began as a playful NFT ecosystem in 2021, then formalized into a high‑performance, EVM‑compatible L1 that has since raised around $100 million in Series B funding and attracted hundreds of projects building on top of it. This trajectory illustrates how strong online culture and community cohesion can be leveraged into infrastructure‑level crypto projects, rather than the other way around. A core focus of the interview is Berachain’s Proof of Liquidity (PoL) design, which Smokey describes as a variant of proof‑of‑stake that turns liquidity provision into the basis for network security and governance. Instead of simply staking the native token, network participants earn governance power and influence by supplying liquidity to key on‑chain DeFi primitives, with block rewards flowing downstream to applications and LPs to create a “positive flywheel” between users, protocols, and the chain itself. This model is presented as an attempt to align incentives, deepen native liquidity, and reduce reliance on short‑term, mercenary capital as Berachain moves from its NFT origins toward mainnet launch and broader ecosystem expansion.

✨ AI-generated background, compiled from web sources — not editorial content.

More coverage

• Exclusive interview with Smokey The Bera, co-founder of Berachain (mexc.com)
• How Berachain Intends to Deliver on the Hype: Smokey The Bera (coinage.media)
• Berachain 101: Everything You Need To Know | Bankless - Podwise (podwise.ai)
• Interview with Berachain Founder Smokey: PoL is the Chain-Level Y ... (binance.com)

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• Berachain
• NFT
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• Layer 1