What happened to the Berachain ecosystem?

@Berachain launched in February 2025 to considerable fanfare, attracting billions in deposits within weeks. More than a year on, the numbers tell a different story.

A Sustained Decline in Key Metrics

Over the past 30 days, Berachain's total value locked (TVL) fell 36.3% and DEX volume dropped 48.5%. On a year-over-year basis, TVL is down roughly 90%, sitting at approximately $26.2 million. For context, the chain's TVL peaked at around $3.35 billion shortly after mainnet launch before entering a prolonged slide.

The token has followed a similar path. TVL peaked at $3.35 billion and has since collapsed by roughly 88%, while the $BERA token has crashed over 90% from its high. The ecosystem has suffered significant outflows since April 2025, partly due to a reduction in incentives and rewards designed to attract users. Berachain's Proof-of-Liquidity mechanism also means that a falling token price feeds directly into less generous staking incentives, compounding the pressure.

There are, however, a couple of bright spots. On-chain gas and fees held steady over the latest 30-day period, edging up 0.43% to $1,777. And on August 17, DEX volume jumped 158.7% in a single day, rising from $398,000 to $1.03 million. Whether that represents the start of a recovery or a one-off spike remains to be seen, given that TVL continued to decline on the same day.

The Bectra Upgrade: A Technical Milestone

Against that backdrop, Berachain has pressed ahead with a significant protocol upgrade. On June 4, the Bectra upgrade went live on Berachain mainnet, making it the first EVM-identical Layer 1 to fully implement Ethereum's Pectra execution-layer upgrades after Ethereum itself.

Bectra introduces programmable smart accounts, faster validator exits, and improved support for rollups, with changes that require no contract rewrites and are immediately usable by existing apps, validators, and end users. Practically speaking, every wallet can now function like a smart account, allowing users to batch transactions in one click, set spending limits, pay gas in $HONEY (Berachain's native stablecoin), or set up recurring payments.

Because Berachain's consensus model differs from Ethereum's, Bectra does not include Pectra's consensus-layer changes. But since the chain is EVM-compatible, developers do not need to rewrite existing contracts, which is a meaningful relief for the 200-plus apps already live on the network.

Whether the technical progress is enough to reverse the broader trend of capital and user departures is the question the ecosystem now faces. The metrics suggest Berachain still has significant ground to recover before the optimism of its launch is reflected in on-chain activity again.

Sources:
Berachain Blog: Bectra Is Live
CoinDesk: Berachain Follows Ethereum's Pectra Upgrade With Bectra
DefiLlama: Berachain TVL and Fees