Reward vault & delegation breakdown
| Metric | Value |
|---|
Reward-vault APR at different cutting-board weights
A validator can re-cut its board roughly daily — this shows what happens to your APR if BGT emission to this vault is scaled up or down while everything else stays fixed.
| BGT/day to vault | Emission APR | Total APR |
|---|
Three income streams, one BGT token — and none of them move together
Berachain's Proof of Liquidity splits your reward into layers that most vote-escrow forks collapse into one. Reward-vault APR is Berachain's own documented formula: APR = (rewardRate × secondsPerYear × priceOfBGT) ÷ (totalSupply × priceOfStakeToken), where rewardRate is the BGT emitted per second to your specific vault and totalSupply is the stake token deposited there. Since BGT is non-transferable but burns 1:1 into BERA, its price is modeled as BERA spot. This layer stacks on top of whatever base yield (swap fees, lending interest) the stake token already earns — the two are additive, not the same number.
Validator boost is separate and requires no vault deposit at all: holding BGT lets you delegate ("boost") it to a validator, raising that validator's proposer weight and its share of network-wide BGT issuance. Your cut is yourBGT ÷ validatorTotalBoost × validatorDailyBlockRewardBGT × (1 − commission) — proportional to your slice of that validator's total delegated BGT, paid regardless of whether you're an LP anywhere.
The incentive marketplace is what actually moves the rewardRate number in layer one: protocols bid for cutting-board weight by posting a contract-enforced incentive rate — dollars per BGT unit directed to their vault — to validators and their delegators. When that incentive rate sits below BGT's redeemable market price, the protocol is buying emission direction cheaper than BGT trades for in the open market; above it, they're overpaying versus simply acquiring BGT outright. Because cutting boards can be re-cut roughly daily, a vault's headline APR is a live auction outcome, not a fixed schedule — the scenario table above shows how sensitive your yield is to that single input changing.
FAQ
How is Berachain reward vault APR actually calculated?
Berachain's own documented formula is APR = (rewardRate × secondsPerYear × priceOfBGT) ÷ (totalSupply × priceOfStakeToken), where rewardRate is the BGT emitted per second to that specific reward vault, and totalSupply is the amount of the stake token (an LP token, HONEY, or other whitelisted collateral) currently deposited in the vault. Because BGT is non-transferable but redeemable 1:1 for BERA by burning it, priceOfBGT is modeled as BERA's spot price. This is separate from and additive to whatever base swap-fee or lending yield the stake token itself already earns.
What is Proof of Liquidity and why does BGT emission per vault change?
Proof of Liquidity is Berachain's consensus design: validators, not liquidity providers, decide how much of the network's fixed per-block BGT issuance flows to each whitelisted reward vault, via a "cutting board" — an on-chain list of vault weights each validator sets and can update roughly once per day. Protocols compete for a bigger slice of that cutting board by posting incentives (paid in their own token, per unit of BGT their vault receives) directly to validators and their delegators. That means a vault's rewardRate is not fixed — it moves whenever validators re-cut their board in response to incentive bids, so the same stake can see APR swing without the user changing anything.
How does BGT boost / delegation pay a validator's delegators, separately from LP rewards?
Holding BGT lets you "boost" a validator, which increases that validator's weight in block-proposer selection and therefore its share of the network's total BGT issuance and priority-fee revenue. Your cut of a boosted validator's earnings is proportional to your share of that validator's total delegated BGT: yourDailyBGT = (yourBoost ÷ validatorTotalBoost) × validatorDailyBlockRewardBGT × (1 − commission). This is a completely separate income stream from staking in a reward vault — you can boost a validator with BGT you never put into any vault, and a vault LP with zero BGT boosted earns none of this.
What is the BGT incentive marketplace and when is it a bargain for a protocol?
Berachain's incentive marketplace lets any protocol post a contract-enforced exchange rate — an incentive rate paid per BGT unit — to bid for cutting-board weight toward its own reward vault. If that incentive rate is below BGT's redeemable market price (BGT converts 1:1 to BERA), the protocol is effectively directing emissions toward itself for less than BGT is worth on the open market, which is a bargain versus simply buying BERA and boosting validators directly. If the incentive rate is above BGT's price, the protocol is overpaying relative to just acquiring BGT outright.
Why isn't Berachain reward-vault APR the same as a normal liquidity-mining APR?
A normal liquidity-mining APR pays a fixed token emission set by the protocol's own tokenomics schedule. A Berachain reward-vault APR is priced in BGT, whose issuance rate to that specific vault is set daily by validator cutting-board votes that are themselves bid on by competing incentive payments — so the emission side of the formula is a live governance auction, not a schedule. The stake-token side (LP fee yield, lending interest, etc.) still behaves like any normal DeFi yield; only the BGT layer on top is auction-driven.