PancakeSwap proposes veCAKE launch to boost governance influence and liquidity

Multi-chain decentralized exchange PancakeSwap has proposed introducing voice-escrowed CAKE (veCAKE) and voting meters in the coming days, with more than 98% of the votes currently in favor of the launch.

This move is “intended to give CAKE holders greater influence over governance, increase liquidity in our pools, and boost rewards for CAKE stakers,” according to the proposal.

As part of PancakeSwap’s fourth quarter roadmap, voting meters allow veCAKE holders to vote on the distribution of emissions from CAKE farms. This means that CAKE holders, stakers, and protocols can start accumulating veCAKE and use their holdings to influence reward distributions in various liquidity pools on the decentralized exchange.

Specifically, holders would be able to decide how CAKE emissions are allocated within each pool, with their voting rights depending on their veCAKE balance. Holders can also delegate their voting rights to external protocols and potentially earn additional rewards.

The vote-blocked (ve) model was developed by Curve Finance and later adopted by many DEXs. This allows users to lock their tokens for a certain period of time during which they cannot be traded. In return, they receive “five” tokens, giving them more substantial voting rights in governance decisions and often higher protocol rewards. It aims to promote long-term engagement and align user interests with the success of a protocol, moving away from short-term speculation and towards sustainable participation and decision-making.

Phased launch and initial allocations

According to the proposal, the rollout of voting meters will take place in phases, initially for liquidity pools on BNB Chain, Ethereum and Arbitrum, with approximately 0.99 CAKE per block in rewards. Expansion to other chains will take place in later phases.

The “Kitchen” team running the PancakeSwap platform proposes to maintain a 40% voting share in the initial rollout, something the company says is necessary to “ensure a smooth transition for liquidity providers from farms managed by de Kitchen to farms managed by veCAKE voting, without significantly impacting their APRs” and that “the core liquidity pools continue to receive sufficient incentives such that liquidity depth and fee generation are not significantly affected.”

The Kitchen’s voting strategy would focus on maintaining competitive returns for large liquidity pools, ensuring existing partnership agreements are met and providing a portion of allocation to smaller farms in a gradual shift to a new veCAKE voting system, according to the report.

“If the voting results will not have a significant impact on core liquidity pools and trading volumes, the Kitchen will abstain from voting in that specific voting period or vote in accordance with existing votes,” the Kitchen team added. “Over time, the Kitchen aims to reduce the portion of CAKE emissions controlled directly by the Kitchen as all veCAKE participants become familiar with the process.”

Next steps

Voting on the proposal ends tomorrow at 5:30 a.m. ET. If approved, the proposal will go into effect and veCAKE will launch shortly after voting ends.

PancakeSwap currently offers DEX trading on BNB Chain, Ethereum, Polygon, zkSync Era, Arbitrum, Linea, Base, Aptos and opBNB, according to its website.

This latest proposal follows PancakeSwap’s move to share trading fee revenue with CAKE token stakers in July. PancakeSwap also launched its own gaming marketplace last week.