Native Staking rewards for CAKE are composed of:

Inflation and trading fees: CAKE comes from veCAKE gauge emission (~ 39,245 CAKE per day) and PancakeSwap trading revenue sharing.

When staking through Stake Dao, the staking rewards for sdCAKE are composed of native CAKE rewards and vote bounty rewards, which are either based on your own votes or optimized by Stake DAO when delegated.

You are welcome to play around with our CAKE Staking Calculator to get a better feel of how these metrics can influence your rewards.

• sdCAKE rewards are distributed once every 2 weeks and can be claimed from the Claim page.
• Once you have staked your tokens, you can vote with your SdTokens on Governance Proposals. Holders of sdTokens have the ability to vote via Stake DAO, and the Liquid Locker will vote consequently with his locked token balance on the underlying protocol.
• All users who voted through Stake DAO via the meta-governance, for underlying protocols inflation, or delegated their voting power (in this case, the Stake DAO team votes for them), are eligible for vote incentives from Votemarket, provided an incentive exists for that period for that gauge.

We strive to make staking as safe and transparent as possible, however, it's important to consider factors that may influence whether a particular staking option is appropriate for you.

Unbonding risk: Converting CAKE to sdCAKE is irreversible. You may stake and unstake sdCAKE tokens, but not convert them back to CAKE. Secondary markets, like PancakeSwap, however exist to allow the exchange of sdCAKE for CAKE at varying market rates.

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 the PancakeSwap ecosystem that is used to carry out the key functions of the platform as detailed below:

Token Utilities

• Governance: CAKE is used to vote on governance proposals on the network. veCAKE holders have voting rights in PancakeSwap's governance system.
• Staking: Users can temporarily lock CAKE up to earn protocol revenue and inflationary rewards.

Liquid Lockers allow users to lock their tokens in exchange of sdTokens, which are liquid versions of the locked tokens. Users can stake these sdTokens on Stake DAO to earn rewards while maintaining their voting rights, or just use them on the underlying protocol as a liquid token.

Liquid Lockers address a significant issue in the DeFi space. Previously, if a person or protocol wanted to use their lockable tokens (like CRV, FXS, etc.) for governance or for boosting yield, they faced a tough decision. They could either lock on the native protocol, which allowed them to enjoy a yield and ability to vote through governance while losing liquidity.

Alternatively, they could use a locker, reap the benefits of boosted yield and yield farming, have the ability to exit with a limited penalty, but forfeit their governance power. This forced a choice between voting power and yield, imposing restrictions on users.

Liquid Lockers aim to offer the best of both worlds. They enable users to lock their tokens and receive sdTOKENs in return. Users can stake these sdTOKENs on Stake DAO to gain various benefits, such as native APR, a share of boosted strats rewards, the ability to sell voting rights of the underlying asset, and additional SDT incentives. They always have the possibility of exiting their position and returning to the underlying token.

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%