According to relevant information, the recent price drop of the Bera coin (BERA) is mainly related to the exposure of a controversial 'refund right' agreement clause.
📉 Core Controversy: The VC's 'Capital Preservation' Privilege
The trigger for the incident was the media's exposure of a supplementary agreement signed by Berachain with the investment firm Brevan Howard's Nova Digital fund during its Series B financing in 2024.
Special Clause: The agreement grants Nova Digital a 'refund right', allowing it to request a full refund of its $25 million investment principal from the Berachain foundation at any time within one year after the Token Generation Event (TGE) on February 6, 2025.
Controversy: This clause is seen as granting the institution a 'zero-risk' investment privilege. If the project performs well, it can hold tokens for profit; if it performs poorly, it can choose to refund its capital. In contrast, other investors are fully exposed to market risks. Reportedly, other Series B investors claimed they were not informed of this special clause, raising widespread doubts about the fairness of financing and information disclosure.
🏦 Project response
In response to this matter, Berachain's co-founder made a public response, with the core points as follows:
Inaccurate statement: Claims that the related reports are 'incomplete and inaccurate.'
Nature of the clause: Explaining that this clause is an additional commercial agreement added to guard against specific risks such as TGE failure or failure to list, and is not intended to evade the decline in token prices after TGE. This practice has precedents among leading institutions.
Cooperation: Emphasizing that Nova Digital remains one of the largest token holders and liquidity providers of Berachain and has been supporting the project.
📎Long-term fundamental challenges
In addition to the aforementioned sudden events, the weak performance of Berachain's ecosystem is also a significant factor putting pressure on the token price.
Ecosystem contraction: According to DeFiLlama data, Berachain's total value locked (TVL) has significantly decreased from a historical peak of $3.3 billion to approximately $270 million, a drop of over 90%.
Single ecosystem: Its ecosystem relies excessively on the liquidity staking protocol Infrared Finance, lacking diversified product support.
User activity decline: Most users are low-frequency participants, and the number of daily active wallet addresses has significantly declined compared to the early days of the launch.
In summary, the decline of the Bera token is the result of a short-term sudden crisis of confidence combined with long-term fundamental weaknesses.
