What PancakeSwap’s latest proposal means for CAKE investors

• PancakeSwap wants to reduce CAKE’s total supply.
• This will make the token “ultra sound,” and available across many chains.

In a game-changing move, members of the governance community of popular decentralized exchange (DEX) PancakeSwap [CAKE] are voting on a proposal to reduce the total supply of its native token significantly.

The proposal, if approved, would reduce CAKE’s maximum supply by 40%, from 750 million to 450 million. 

??PancakeSwap Fam, the moment is here!

?Proposal to reduce the max supply of $CAKE from 750M to 450M!

?By reducing our token supply by 300,000,000 $CAKE, we signify PancakeSwap’s successful shift from a high-inflation emissions model to the Ultrasound CAKE era.

?Vote for… pic.twitter.com/3zCzoBBiRl

— PancakeSwap?Everyone's Favorite DEX (@PancakeSwap) December 28, 2023

According to the proposal, the decision to significantly cut CAKE’s supply was borne out of the need to make the token ultrasound. 

PancakeSwap noted,

“Total supply is an important metric when understanding the impact of token burns and future emissions. Lowering this number is a critical step to achieve ultrasound CAKE and enables us to send a clear signal of PancakeSwap’s pivot away from a hyperinflationary tokenomics model.”

Additionally, by reducing CAKE’s total supply, the DEX believes that this would allow it to gain market share across other chains. 

The vote, which opened on 28th December and will end on 29th December, has garnered overwhelming support from the community. As of this writing, over 98% of votes cast are in favor of the reduction.

High user count but low deposits

With a trading volume of $12 billion recorded in the last month, PancakeSwap’s V3 iteration ranked as the third decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol with the highest trading volume in the last month, according to data from DappRadar.

Due to the series of ecosystem updates completed on the DEX in 2023, PancakeSwap has seen steady growth in its active monthly users.

Data from Token Terminal showed that this has increased by 29% since January. So far this month, 1.8 million addresses have completed at least one transaction on the exchange.

However, despite the uptick in user activity, net deposits on PancakeSwap have trended downward since February. This metric measures the difference between the total value of tokens added to and removed from liquidity pools on the exchange. 

When this declines, it shows that more tokens are being withdrawn than added, suggesting decreased liquidity and potentially lower trading volume.

AMBCrypto found that PancakeSwap’s net deposits have fallen by 41% since February. This caused the monthly trading volume on the DEX to peak at $17.38 billion in May.

Source: Token Terminal

This resulted in a corresponding peak in network fees and revenue in the same month.

How much are 1,10,100 CAKEs worth today?

According to data from Token Terminal, PancakeSwap’s network fees totaled $17.3 million in May and have since dropped by 40%.

Likewise, protocol revenue was $5.6 million in May, dropping by 45% since then.