Binance Labs Invests into PancakeSwap

^(Source)

Evening

So, today Binance Labs(the venture capital side of the largest crypto exchange, Binance) announced making strategic investment into defi protocol PancakeSwap. As per announcement, Binance Labs have invested in the native token of PancakeSwap, Cake.

As per Binance Labs Head, Bill Qian:

PancakeSwap has been leading the development and mass adoption of BNB Chain. Given that PancakeSwap is the most widely used dApp and the DeFi project with the highest TVL on BNB Chain, we have and will continue to provide strong support for the project.

Pancakeswap was launched in 2018, and is an automatic market maker(AMM) on Binance Smart Chain offering its users services like BEP-20 tokens trading, swapping and other defi investment tools. As per DeFiLlama, TLV across PancakeSwap currently stands at $4.82 billion making it the most valuable dapp on BNB chain. Pancakeswap is showing above $400 million trading volume over the last 24 hrs, making its third largest dex after Uniswap (v3) and dYdX. It is also BNB's largest app in terms of active user that are around 400,000.

My Concerns

So far Binance haven't disclosed the monetary value of their investment into Cake and the underlaying terms. I seriously hope that this doesn't mean Binance having a say into operations and governance of PancakeSwap. Lets just hope that its nothing ominous and Binance just wanted to invest in the biggest dapp on the BNB chain in a bid to boost their centralized coin BNB.

Like many of us, I too came in contact with BNB chain when I started using CubDefi, so I naturally have used PancakeSwap multiple times over the course of last year.

Right now, the overall crypto market along with defi space is pretty much stagnant and in a bad shape. No new monies are flowing as investors grow fearful. And like all other dex tokens, Cake is currently heavily pinned down. As of now, it is trading at $4.56, enjoying a small pump following Binance Labs investment announcement. But the value is still way below than the last year's all time high of $42.59.

PancakeSwap down trend started over the last quarter of 2021, with the rise of defi protocols across Terra blockchain and many claimed that the accelerated growth period is finally over for BNB chain and PancakeSwap. But now with Terra dusted, we still have PancakeSwap surviving and fighting the odds. The platform still does have a huge potential for growth, when the crypto winter ends.