Pancake Swap - Eat The $CAKE Or Keep Baking?

I used Pancake Swap since day one, farming in there soon after launch. I am still farming 3 years later, event if it is not what it was. The $CAKE token had a serious decline and they are working on rejuvenation since 2022! But will new chains and veCAKE be enough to make Pancake Swap great again?

Pancake Swap is still the biggest DEX on BNB chain, and their expansion to new chains created even more trading volume. The migration to VeCAKE crated new perks, such as weekly revenue sharing and weekly CAKE pool rewards. Gauge voting changed the way LP providers will earn, with hundreds of gauges to chose from.

The VeCAKE holders will use their tokens to vote for their favorite pools and boost them. They will be able to claim additional benefits from other protocols. What other benefits I have for holding VeCAKE? I can participate in IFO public sales and support multi-chain IFOs. I can boost my winnings in Trading Campaign rewards, boost my fixed staking rewards, and many more!

Dived straight into the new system and used my VeCAKE to vote. Didn't do any research and choose the recommended gouge, the one that will give me the highest rewards. This is identical with Velodrome, and I have to remember to vote every week.

Did I voted weekly? No I didn't! I remembered to go and check now, while writing this sentence. Went there after few weeks, voted, and hoped that I will remember more often. I want to keep my earnings maximal, and skipping votes doesn't bring rewards.

All my $CAKE was locked for six months, and voted now and then! However, both the CAKE Pool and revenue sharing rewards were quite low! It didn't met my expectations, and earning 3.25 $CAKE in half year is not great! One of my bad traits is excessive loyalty, and I feel bad leaving places or protocols where I've been an early adopter.

The ecosystem is transparent, built on open-source software and all the smart contracts are publicly visible. The migration to V3 changed the way things were working, adding a different token dynamic. My loyalty made me lock my $CAKE for six more months, and give it another go!

I embraced V3 and veCAKE but is this still financially efficient? A lot of things can happen in six months, such as big pumps or massive price drops. With the tokens locked, I could miss them and then become a bag holder until better days!

I need to become less sentimental and not marry my coins! However, I still locked 1,098 $CAKE for another half year and hoped for the best! Got that veCAKE again and started voting! The plan is to remember more often to update the gauges and vote, so the rewards are maximized!

Shall I eat the cake or keep baking? One month left until this batch unlocks and the rewards are lower than the previous time! Only 2.29 $CAKE farmed so far and not much will be added in the remaining 30 days!

I still have few weeks to decide, but my crypto savvy brain tells me that the time of Pancake Swap may be gone! It will be an important part of crypto history but the current status quo changed a lot! I would probably be better swapping in stablecoins and dive into an auto-compounding pool! Time to think and solve this dilemma!