PancakeSwap outperforms Circle in weekly fees, leads CAKE to monthly high

PancakeSwap surpassed Circle in weekly fee generation, a sign of the DEX’s positioning as a staple for the new wave of token activity. The activity also helped CAKE recover to a one-month high above $2.88.

PancakeSwap, the leading DEX on BNB Smart Chain, surpassed Circle both on daily and weekly fee generation. The DEX is only second to Tether, the leading smart contract on Ethereum. 

PancakeSwap produced $7.81M in fees for the past day, ahead of Circle’s $6.41M. The DEX achieved $47.32M in terms of weekly fees, above Circle’s $44.5M.

The DEX, which carries the hottest memes of the Binance ecosystem, surpassed Solana’s app activity, also breaking out of the pack for most DeFi apps. Circle mostly benefits from USDC usage on the Solana ecosystem and is charting a separate path. 

The exchange is also preparing to mark one of its peak months for the past year. In May, the DEX surpassed $100B in trading volumes. The exchange aims to position itself as one of the staples in the crypto space, recovering after years of relatively low volumes.

PancakeSwap became the biggest source of liquidity on BNB Smart Chain, which grew its value locked to $6.49B. 

PancakeSwap V3 grows on demand for hot tokens

Most of the activity is driven by the expansion of PancakeSwap V3, the most active collection of pools with over $8.32B in daily volumes. The DEX stands out for being the arena to quickly trade the hottest trending tokens. The activity on PancakeSwap reflects the growing inflow of users to Binance Smart Chain, driven by low fees and regular Binance Alpha listings. 

PancakeSwap is also growing its audience, as traders seek ways to mint alpha points and participate in additional IDO projects or Binance Wallet token airdrops. The DEX also showed an increasing share of swaps coming directly from Binance Wallet, as traders are farming alpha points. Binance allowed even centralized traders to tap the hottest meme assets, leading to an inflow of users into PancakeSwap.

In the past 12 months, BNB Smart Chain held 373 IDO events. PancakeSwap managed to achieve the highest returns due to the high profile of Binance’s social media and growing trading volumes. 

CAKE tokens recover with the launch of new tokenomics

One of the biggest changes for PancakeSwap is the launch of its new tokenomics. Previously, CAKE was mostly supported by staking and burns. 

All CAKE tokens staked in the DEX pool or as veCake have been unstaked and fully unlocked. The DEX also discontinued older forms of yield farming and reward programs. CAKE retains a 321M supply, relatively scarce for a utility token. 

The last successful month on PancakeSwap also drove the native token to $2.88, with trading volumes breaking above $300M. The token is seen as a potential breakout asset in the summer of 2025, mostly based on the expanded influence of BNB Smart Chain. 

The major risk for CAKE is that staking is no longer limiting the available supply. The CAKE unlock happened at the end of April and has not yet affected the price, but may become a factor if older buyers decide to sell into one of the pumps. 

CAKE is still far from its all-time peak above $41 and is trying to reforge its path as demand for DEX pairs is growing. Currently, PancakeSwap is behind the peak DEX activity on BNB Smart Chain, surpassing even the peak during the 2021 bull market. In the past week, the chain’s activity expanded by 151%. PancakeSwap made up over 86% of all DEX activity, with strong growth from DODO and Uniswap.

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