PancakeSwap is a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange based on the Binance Smart Chain blockchain. PancakeSwap has its own CAKE token, which can be used for stacking and farming, voting, and buying intra-platform lottery tickets. You can purchase the token directly on DEX, but only for cryptocurrencies. Below we look at alternative ways to buy PancakeSwap (CAKE), including for fiat money.

PancakeSwap’s Defi-protocol was based on Binance smart contracts, so it is not surprising that the exchange actively supports the coin and offers several options to buy it. The easiest way is to use a special section for instant purchase for fiat.

Buying PancakeSwap (CAKE) requires just a few simple steps:

  • Create an account on Binance.
  • Open the “Buy Cryptocurrency” section and select the “Credit/Debit Card” subsection there.
  • Fill out the form by selecting currencies from the list and specifying purchase amounts. Click “Confirm.
  • Complete the KYC verification by entering your full name and country of residence.
  • Add your card and complete the payment.

After completing the first step of verification, the limit for buying fiat on Binance will be 300 USD. By confirming more data, you can expand it. When using pools, you will receive FLIP tokens, which can later be used for CAKE farming. CAKE tokens can be used for staking to get SYROP tokens. For SYROP you can get lottery tickets and perform management functions.

The exchange has also distinguished itself by its use of NFTs tokens. Users who participated in the lottery can win up to 50% of the lottery pool and be rewarded with NFTs-cards. You can also trade NFTs on the PancakeSWAP platform itself. Even after all the currency in the market fell in May 2021, the platform did not stop working and survived this phase in the market and steadily paid users their rewards.

PancakeSwap gives you the opportunity to buy new coins issued on the Binance Smart Chain blockchain. But keep in mind that not all of them will be reliable and profitable, but on the contrary, you can lose your investments. Every coin is anchored by something and has its own foundation, be it its own ecosystem or exchange.

How to Use PancakeSwap?

Like all decentralized exchanges, PancakeSwap is based on a smart contract. In fact, the exchange site is an external interface linking user funds to that contract. All transactions on the exchange take place within the blockchain and are not directly controlled by anyone. The developers of the exchange can control its operation by updating the contract, but not by changes in the blockchain.

As of today, the exchange supports the following transactions:

  • selling and buying tokens;
  • placement of funds in liquidity pools;
  • pharming tokens;
  • sale of prediction cards;
  • lottery;

Features of the exchange include: cryptocurrency exchanger, adding liquidity, profitable farming, participation in lotteries, team competitions, earning NFT tokens, primary farm offer (IFO). Like on any other DEX platform, staking on PancakeSwap is a voluntary contribution of tokens (adding liquidity), for which depositors are awarded liquidity provider tokens (LP-tokens).

Platform interface

Compared to Uniswap, the interface of PancakeSwap finance looks brighter and richer. The link to PancakeSwap pools and other sections of the site are located in the upper left corner, while the main ones are duplicated by brightly colored icons with buttons in the center of the site.

On the top right is the Connect button to connect the wallet, and at the bottom, left is settings buttons and buttons to go to the PancakeSwap community pages in the social network Twitter and messenger Telegram. The current Cake token exchange rate to the U.S. dollar is displayed next to it.

V2

Smart contracts cannot be edited once posted. This guarantees their immutability – one of the main advantages of blockchain. When the key upgrade was done, the old code could not simply be replaced by the new code. That is why the exchange was divided into the obsolete V1 branch and the new, up-to-date V2 branch. Migration of assets from the old contract is always available.

How does pharming work?

Let’s move on to the passive income sections and the first in line is Farming. Let’s understand what it is and how to earn on it? Farming is a passive way to earn cryptocurrency by creating LP pairs of tokens and adding them to liquidity.

Farming differs from staking only in the fact that when we use it, we stack LP-Tokens and get rewarded in a certain token chosen at the site. On PancakeSwap, farming pools give out rewards in Cake tokens, while in steak pools you can get rewards in other tokens. Let’s move on to instructions on how you can earn from farming.

Hover over the “Earn” section, then go to the “Farming” page. Here we’re greeted by all the active pools to invest in and a couple of buttons.

  • The “Nested Only” slider, when turned on, shows only the pools in which you participate.
  • To the left of the slider is just a toggle for how the pools are displayed, nothing more.
  • To the right is a toggle between active and already completed farming pools
  • Even further to the right we see a sorting list. We recommend sorting by “Liquidity”. This will highlight the most highly liquid pairs, with less risk. It is better for beginners.
  • And at the end there is a search bar to find pools with the right tokens.

Below we have a list of pools with all the information we need. By clicking on the arrow on the right we can open a window with more information about how much we have earned from the pool and a button to activate and steak our LP Tokens into the pool.

Stacking CAKE token

There are open-ended pools and pools with a limited number of blocks. You can stack in pools to get CAKE or other coins. One of the pools for getting CAKE has a permanent interest capitalization feature, which greatly increases the estimated annual interest rate.

At first glance it may seem that the % for staking is very high, it is, but pay attention to the tokenomics of the project and you will understand where such a huge interest comes from.

Buying and selling tokens at PancakeSwap.finance

After the preparatory stage, go to the official website of the exchange PancakeSwap.finance, in the upper right corner click “Connect wallet”. Select MetaMask and confirm this action in the pop-up window of the wallet. When connecting to the exchange, in the upper right corner will appear the last digits/letters of the wallet address.

Go to the “Exchange” in the “Transactions”, select the coins for exchange, in the example consider the exchange of 0.1 BNB to BUSB – stablecoin exchange Binance, equal to one U.S. dollar. Selecting tokens and specifying the amounts, we click the exchange. In the pop-up window with confirmation of the transaction, you must once again check the amount of exchange and the names of coins.

After the confirmation, you will see a confirmation window in the MetaMask wallet. When the exchange is completed, the appropriate notification will pop up on the exchange, and the MetaMask wallet will offer to add the new token to the list of coins. Your wallet should now display the coins you purchased.

Pools

Let’s consider a way of passive earning, but with the example of one-way pools, that is, without the need for LP-tokens stacking. In Pools, we will only stack CAKE and get different tokens in return, depending on the choice of pool. Such pools on PancakeSwap are called Syrup pools.

Syrup pool is a passive earning tool that allows you to stake $CAKE tokens to earn the same $CAKE or other cryptocurrencies. To get to the Stacking page, hover over the “Earn” section and go to “Pools”. On the page, we see the familiar list of pools but without LP-Tokens. The information and buttons are absolutely identical to those on the farming page.

Each section of a particular pool shows details such as:

  • Recent $token: this shows your accumulated profit in certain tokens.
  • APR: annual percentage yield. You can see more details by clicking on the calculator icon
  • APY: annual percentage yield, including constant reinvestment. You can see more details by clicking on the calculator icon
  • Total invested: how many $CAKE tokens are invested in the pool. The more, the less risk.
  • Ends in: the time in blocks after which the pool will end. To see the time in minutes/hours/days, just click on the clock icon.

How safe is the exchange?

This suggests that the exchange is not a scam and the protocol has no obvious vulnerabilities. But this does not mean that the platform is completely safe. Despite all the checks, there have already been cases of the platform being hacked after passing the audit.

Using any Defi platform, including PancakeSwap, always involves risk. Even the most reliable and proven projects can suffer from scammers. Therefore, the advice is always relevant: never invest more than you’re willing to lose.

So, when setting up your wallet:

  • Download and install only the latest version of the wallet from the official source;
  • Follow the installation instructions carefully;
  • Create secure backup copies of the recovery phrases and never share them with anyone or under any circumstances.

Participating in IFO

The IFO selling scheme is completely identical to the IDO scheme. The initial sale of tokens takes place on the decentralized PancakeSwap exchange and has 2 participation pools:

  1. Basic Sale. A limited pool where you can deposit $CAKE tokens for a maximum of $100. Yes, it is not enough, but this pool is more profitable for low banks because the same 100$ allocation in other pools will be very small.
  2. Unlimited Sale. Unlimited Pool. There is no limit to the amount of each person’s participation, but there is an additional fee when receiving it. This pool suits more for those market players, who have big enough banks and don’t want to change at the regular pool.

Allocation per person is determined depending on the amount invested $CAKE in the pool itself. If you’ve invested $CAKE for $100 in Basic Sale, a total of $500,000 worth of tokens allocated, and the price per token is $2, we look at the total amount collected. Let’s say we have invested a total of $1,000,000 in the pool, which is 2 times the goal of the collection. Then we get an allocation of not $100 and 50 tokens, but $50 and 25 tokens.

On the IFO page, we see the 2 pool options we wrote about above. Let’s sort out the values in the pools:

  • The maximum number of tokens: this value is only present in the first pool, which indicates how much maximum $CAKE can be invested in the pool. This number is equal to $100.
  • Total Allocated: indicates how much total money was invested in the pool.
  • Need to raise funds: the developers’ goal, exactly how much they want to raise on each pool.
  • Price per $Token: I think there is no need to explain here, just a price for 1 token. At this price will be the purchase after the allocation.
  • Additional commission: this value is only present in the unlimited pool, which indicates the percentage of commission for buying tokens.

Conclusion

There are many platforms popping up right now that offer to stake assets in exchange for tokens from other projects. However, all of them practically work on Ethereum blockchain, whereas PancakeSwap was created on Binance Smart Chain (BSC), and this gives advantages such as faster and cheaper transactions.

PancakeSwap is a decentralized exchange created to exchange BEP-20 tokens. Users of the platform can trade BEP-20 tokens or add liquidity to the exchange. In addition, the service allows users to deposit LP tokens into the exchange and receive CAKEs. The platform’s capabilities do not end there: users can also earn from CAKE stacking in SYRUP pools, participate in lotteries, NFT raffles, and IFOs. Unlike other farms, PancakeSwap emphasizes gamification: earning by playing. And judging by the number of platform users, people like it.