This is the Band Bear equivalent article and is needed for BearGate and InfinityGate.

Henlo, please note everything written after this statement may, or may not be, psyops. This is written for education and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Most of this was written by Napzilla who has a lot of bear jpegs and edited by Janitooor who also has a lot of bear jpegs and is also a seed investor in Berachain. Remember anon, do your own psyops.

The State of Bong Bears

https://dune.com/thj/bongbears

The Bong Bears and their rebases are a group of NFT collections that sit at the intersection of NFTs and DeFi. We at The Honey Jar were interested in the growth of these collections, so we broke down the on-chain data to see how the bera ecosystem has evolved since its launch in August 2021.

In this article, we will:

• Break down the major trends in secondary market trading

• Investigate the size of the Bear over-the-counter (OTC) market

• Present an overview of the Bera holderbase

• Discuss the future of the bears

Secondary Market Trading

The beras have done over $12.6M of trading volume on secondary markets such as OpenSea and Blur. This puts the beras in the top 10% percentile of NFT collections by total secondary market volume.

April 2022 was the all-time high for Opensea trading with $2.8M of secondary market volume. Over the past three months, the bears have seen consistent growth in volume, putting them on-track to return to all-time high levels.

As of February 2023, Blur has become the leading marketplace for bera trading with 38% marketshare. Sudoswap comes second with 35% marketshare, and OpenSea is third with 25.5%.

It’s surprising that Sudoswap sits so high in the bera trading ranking because Sudoswap only has 0.6% marketshare of the total NFT secondary market.

This gap between the behavior of bera traders and the wider NFT market stems from the Bong Bears’ unique origin story. Unlike most NFT collections, the founders and initial Bong Bear community were deeply rooted in DeFi. You can read our Bonga Bera 101 article to get the full history of how the beras first emerged from the depths of DeFi.

The AMM mechanics of Sudoswap, which are unfamiliar to most NFT traders, are comfy for DeFi-native bera holders. As a result, Bera holders are significantly more likely than the average NFT trader to provide liquidity on Sudoswap and thereby facilitate trades there.

The most sophisticated bera LPs have been seeing strong returns. For example, the top Bit Bear pool on Sudoswap has earned 18.7 ETH in fees since it was created in November 2022.

Currently, Bit Bears are the most actively traded tier of the bera family. In February 2023, 69% of the bera trading volume on secondary markets was from Bit Bears.

81% of the bera trades were Bit Bear trades. It makes sense that the bera tier with the highest supply and lowest floor price is the most liquid.

OTC Trading

Over-the-counter (OTC) trades are negotiated privately between individual bera holders instead of going through a marketplace.

We’re currently tracking two OTC trading methods to estimate the size of the bera OTC market:

1. Direct Bear-for-ETH OTC: Instances where one wallet transferred bears to another wallet and received ETH from that wallet on the same day

2. Sudoswap OTC: Trades that take place using Sudoswap’s legacy OTC tool

In both cases, we don’t track OTC activity on the original Bong Bear collection. The fact that original Bong Bears live on the OpenSea Shared Storefront contract make them difficult to track via on-chain analysis.

Direct Bear-for-Eth OTC

We estimate that 251 ETH has been spent on direct Bear-for-ETH OTC, and that 211 bears have traded hands this way.

Sudoswap OTC

Sudoswap OTC is a much more popular method for OTC trades. Using the protocol is much safer than sending somebody your bears and trusting that they pay the agreed amount or vice versa. 1,083ETH has been spent on Sudoswap OTC, and 299 bears have traded hands this way.

Holders

The bera holderbase is designed to grow consistently over time as the existing NFTs rebase into larger and more accessible collections. As we can see in the chart below, when each new rebase is minted we see a positive step change in the bera holderbase.

For most NFT projects, this isn’t the case. They usually achieve peak distribution soon after their mint, and then the supply consolidates over time into a smaller number of strong hands (if it’s a successful collection) or bag-holders (if it’s a weak collection).

Having consistent holder growth is good for continuously introducing more capital and value-add participants to the bera ecosystem. The Bong Bears’ rebasing mechanism continuously rewards early holders and is great for aligning incentives. After most NFT mints, minters are immediately planning their exit strategy. With beras, you find holders who have much longer time horizons for staying in the community and contributing by spreading the word or building (*cough The Honey Jar cough*) to ensure that their future rebases will be even more valuable and liquid.

What’s next?

It’s been a crazy year and a half for the bera clan. The future is shaping up to be even crazier as we anticipate the final rebase (what will it be??), the launch of the highly anticipated Berachain, and the glorious March of the Beras.

We expect that:

• Secondary market liquidity will concentrate around the newer rebases while the higher-tier bears are held long-term by strong hands

• The bears will lead the way with experimentation on the cutting edge of NFT finance (NFTFi)

• The bera holderbase continues to expand in a way that’s beneficial to the network.

We’re excited to be on this journey with you. Can’t wait for what comes next 🐻✨