Berachain Public Testnet “Artio” is live

Berachain has launched its public testnet, "Artio," and the article presents the chain as an EVM-equivalent L1 built on the Cosmos SDK that uses Proof of Liquidity (PoL) consensus, a variant of delegated proof of stake. Under PoL, users earn BGT, a soulbound staking token, only by providing liquidity to chain-enshrined DeFi primitives such as a native AMM DEX, a perps exchange, and a stablecoin lending platform. The article says validators direct BGT rewards across governance-approved protocols, and that users can delegate BGT to earn $HONEY fees and bribes or burn it one-way into BERA. It also states the chain has about 100 validators and plans a mainnet launch later this year.