Stake CAKE

Once you have staked your CAKE, there are things you need to consider going forward:

• There is no auto-compounding when staking CAKE. When your fixed-term staking period ends and your CAKE unlocks, you have 7 days to either lock CAKE to begin a new fixed-term staking period or convert your staked CAKE to flexible staking. After 7 days, if you have not done one of the two options, your staked CAKE will enter what is called “After Burning”, where your CAKE rewards will start to be sent to burn. The % of CAKE rewards being sent to burn will linearly increase in the 90 days “After Burning” period until it reaches 100%, which means all the CAKE rewards are burnt. Hence, please take a note of when the fixed-term staking period ends as otherwise your may lose not only your rewards, but the staked CAKE tokens.
• As a participant in the PancakeSwap protocol, you can also take an active role in the protocol’s governance by voting on proposed changes via the native voting portal. However, it’s important to note that this does not affect the sum of your rewards. Your contribution and vote are important, but they don’t play a role in the amount of rewards you receive for staking.

Native staking rewards on CAKE are composed of:

Token inflation: According to PancakeSwap’s tokenomics v2.0, which was released in August 2022, approximately 40 CAKE tokens are created per block. Of these tokens, 22.5% (or 9 CAKE) are distributed to the CAKE Syrup Pool and allocated to CAKE stakers, resulting in a daily total of approximately 256,380 CAKE tokens for all stakers to share. Additionally, 72.12% of daily CAKE emissions are burned. By participating in staking, CAKE holders can earn a share of these tokens based on the amount of CAKE they have staked, as well as multipliers from bCAKE Farm Boosters. These multipliers are determined by various factors such as the number of LP tokens staked, the number of CAKE staked in fixed-term pools, and the staking duration of these positions.

It’s important to keep in mind that the total annual rewards are distributed among all active stakers. As more tokens are staked, the reward rate decreases.

Please also be aware that custodial rewards may not always be worth the cost. Some custodians have gone bankrupt by offering high reward rates, but usually, these custodians will take a significant portion of the rewards in exchange for staking your tokens.

You can use our Staking Calculator to better understand how these factors may impact your rewards.

Whilst we want to ensure staking is as safe and transparent as possible there are still things to consider regarding whether a specific staking option is right for you.

• Slashing Risk: There is no slashing risk involved for staking CAKE.
• Unbonding Risk: When you choose Flexible Staking, note that there is a 0.1% unstaking fee if you want to withdraw your stake within 72 hours after staking it.
• Performance Fees: If you choose the Flexible Staking option, please note that 2% of the performance fees will be automatically deducted from each yield harvest.
• Protocol security risks: There is an inherent risk that the protocol could contain unknown bugs, this risk applies not only to staking but also the investment in CAKE.

Please note that this is not an exhaustive list of all the risks related to staking.

CAKE is the native token of PancakeSwap and it is used to perform various important functions within the platform.

Token Utilities:

• Staking: CAKE holders can earn token rewards through staking via Syrup Pools.
• Governance: CAKE token holders can participate in governance on PancakeSwap by staking their tokens and using them to vote on proposed changes to the platform via the native voting portal.
• Other reward options: CAKE holders can earn token rewards through farming via Farms. 
• Other utilities: CAKE is used as a medium of exchange on the platform and as collateral for borrowing on PancakeSwap’s lending platform. CAKE can also be used to buy Lottery tickets in the PancakeSwap Lottery, participate in IFO Token Sales, or create your own Pancake Profile and mint NFTs.

Since May 2022, PancakeSwap has implemented tokenomics v2, for which CAKE’s max supply is capped at 750 million. There is a mix of block emissions and token burn mechanisms in the tokenomics. It is designed to mint and distribute token rewards to ecosystem participants and burn tokens in various ways to keep control of the overall token supply. 

For the token burn, the CAKE tokens collected via the unstaking fee and performance fee is burned every week as part of the regular CAKE token burns. This is a good thing for CAKE holders because it reduces the overall amount of CAKE tokens in existence, which helps reduce inflation. You can find the full list of burn mechanisms here.

Cake v2 Initial Token Distribution (based on estimated daily token emissions)

Around 80.7% of net token emissions are distributed to CAKE token holders who are staking them on Syrup Pools. Initial Token Distribution for CAKE is as follows:

• Farms: 18.06%
• Lottery: 1.25%
• CAKE Syrup Pool: 80.70%