DeFi pools will continue to change and try new things as a way to boost the value of their token and provide changes to the space. This is a good thing as a stagnant business is a dead business and will eventually be over taken by one that implements changes and features.

The CAKE token of PancakeSwap has been under fire from the community for a while now as the token price went from $20 all the way down to $6 at one point. The burning and use cases of the token simply started to fall through as the DeFi and general crypto markets started to diminish from their all time high hype.

Fixed Term Staking

Before Pancake swap had three options.

• IFO Cake
• Auto Cake (Compounded your cake for a fee auto)
• Manual Cake (You had to manual claim or compound Cake)

It seems all of this has now been rolled up into one which is called the Fixed Term Staking pool. This new Syrup pool is on MasterChef v2.

You now have two options. The first being adding your cake into the Flexible APY which means you can do with it as you please while earning the flexible rate or you can lock your cake for a period of time.
*Even though it says LOCKED APY You are not locking the APY rate in. It will fluctuate and change and I feel many have been confused by this.

Your options are to lock it for

• 1 Week
• 5 Weeks
• 10 Weeks
• 25 Weeks
• 52 Weeks
  

Each giving their own bonus that will most likely change as well.
What it does is takes the flexible APR rate and adds a multiplier. This will be combined and give you an estimated rate and value. The 253%+ people are seeing right now is a 52 week long lock up. That means your Cake will be locked for a full year and maybe earn 200%APR. This is because as more people add CAKE into this system the lower the APR drops and being that it's a relatively new change most people are still dumping in.

You also have the option to lock in your APY and then extend it by a period of time which also unlocks rewards. Here's an example of what this means.

This extended time simply gets added on to the end of the current contract. In this case I have 5 weeks and I selected to add one week. I can add 5 weeks 10 weeks etc on as well are options to me.

You'll notice the Yield boost. The Yield boost will be boosted based on the total lock duration of your current fixed term staking position. It takes the Flexible APY and gives it a multiplier for the amount of time selected. For 5 weeks right now it's about 35% APY.

What Other Benefits Are There To Locking Your Cake?

Via their image roadmap for this new feature and how it works right now it simply has a boosted cake reward depending on how long it's locked in for. Personally I went for just 5 weeks as I don't really feel all that great about locking it up for longer than that. I'm sure I would have been ok with 10 weeks and I might do that after these 5 weeks are up. That would put me at a new unlock time of August 9th which is when I feel the markets will start to turn positive and leave me in a pretty good spot with a nice stack of CAKE to play with. Who really knows though for me that's just a best guess.

It also seems like the IFO Credits will be added into the mix at some point. That means you'll be earning IFO credits by locking your cake in a fixed term contract.

You'll also get locked governance voting which from the sounds of it might be a different voting system from the normal one.

Last but not least the simple mention of other benefits across the entire platform. It's unclear if that will mean some bonuses to earnings within pools or farms for having a certain amount of locked cake but it leaves them open to many options and features they can do to make locking your cake more attractive.

What are you thoughts on this new fixed term staking for CAKE?