Berachain Hard Fork Phases Out BGT Token for WBERA Rewards
Berachain has launched PoL Next, a hard fork replacing its dual-token model by eliminating BGT in favor of WBERA rewards.
Berachain has initiated the first stage of its PoL Next upgrade, a significant hard fork that dismantles the network's existing dual-token structure by phasing out the BGT governance token and replacing it with WBERA as the primary rewards mechanism. The move marks one of the most consequential architectural shifts in the layer-1 blockchain's short history.
The dual-token model — which separated liquid staking rewards from governance influence through BGT — had been a defining characteristic of Berachain's Proof-of-Liquidity consensus design. By retiring BGT, the protocol is consolidating that structure into a single, more streamlined token economy centered on WBERA, a wrapped version of its native BERA token.
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The transition signals a broader recalibration of how Berachain incentivizes validators and liquidity providers, with the new system intended to simplify participation and potentially lower friction for users who previously had to navigate two distinct token layers. Whether WBERA can sustain the engagement that BGT's governance utility provided remains an open question the market will answer in the coming weeks.
Hard forks of this nature carry inherent risk — protocol rewrites can introduce new attack surfaces and may fragment community consensus among validators and token holders. The fact that Berachain framed the rollout as a staged upgrade suggests the team is proceeding cautiously, with further phases presumably forthcoming before the full transition is complete.
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