"Berachain's $1.1B BERA Token Airdrop: A New Chapter in Layer-1 Blockchain"

Berachain, a layer-1 blockchain that spun out of an Ethereum NFT project in 2021, has launched its mainnet and initiated a $1.1 billion BERA token airdrop to the community. The airdrop, which is the largest in history, has pushed the market capitalization of BERA to over $1 billion.

The BERA token, which serves as the native gas token for the Berachain network, is now trading on major centralized exchanges such as Binance, OKX, and Coinbase. After a brief surge to a peak of $14.83 following the launch, the token has since fallen approximately 49% to $8.00 at the time of writing.

The Berachain network, which raised over $100 million to bring its chain and novel consensus mechanism to fruition, is "EVM-identical," allowing users to easily add Berachain support to popular Ethereum Virtual Machine wallet providers like MetaMask or Rabby.

The airdrop, which is worth over $1.1 billion at the peak trading price, is allocated as follows: 11.15% (55.75 million tokens) is directly available to users today, providing more than $800 million to recipients at the peak trading price so far. An additional 4.6% of the total supply is reserved for select social media users, teams, and applications that earned a share via the "Request for Proposal" incentive program. The final recipients will be those that deposited to Boyco, the network's pre-launch liquidity platform, with rewards to be distributed within 30-90 days.

Beyond the initial airdrop, an additional 65.5 million BERA tokens are set aside for users, developers, and applications as part of the network's "future community incentives" allocation. An eligibility checker was launched by the network on Wednesday to help users determine their eligibility for the airdrop.

BERA is one of three tokens in the Berachain ecosystem, alongside its governance token BGT and HONEY, its native stablecoin. The launch of the Berachain mainnet and the BERA token airdrop mark a significant milestone for the project, as it seeks to establish itself as a leading layer-1 blockchain in the rapidly evolving cryptocurrency landscape.