Just days after raising $500 million, Binance Labs, the investment fund of Binance, announced that it had invested in the CAKE token of decentralised exchange (DEX) PancakeSwap. The news was followed by a brief rise in the token’s price of around 12%.
Binance Labs acquires CAKE
tokens
Binance Labs, the venture capital arm of Binance, today announced a strategic investment in the PancakeSwap decentralised exchange (DEX) token, CAKE.
Built on the NBB Chain (formerly BSC Chain), PancakeSwap is the largest DEX on the blockchain in terms of daily volume traded, and the second largest of any blockchain.
Launched in September 2020, PancakeSwap is also the most used decentralised application (dApp) on the NBB network according to the release, with over 400,000 daily active users and 2.6 million monthly active users.
According to Bill Qian, head of Binance Labs, PancakeSwap has been an important factor in the overall development of blockchain, so it is natural for Binance to support it:
PancakeSwap has been instrumental in the development and mass adoption of the NBB chain. As PancakeSwap is the most widely used decentralised application and the DeFi project with the highest TVL on the NBB Chain, we will continue to provide strong support to the project. “
It is not clear from the release whether Binance Labs will support PancakeSwap in any way other than through the purchase of tokens.
Following the Binance Labs announcement, CAKE rose just over 12% to $4.9 before falling back to $4.68 at the current price.
24-hour CAKE token price
However, the token is seeing a long-term decline, especially when you consider its all-time high (ATH) of $43.96 reached at the end of April 2021.
Binance Labs in the midst of restructuring
The news comes just days after we learned that Bill Qian, current head of Binance Labs, and Nicole Zhang, previously executive director of the firm, were leaving. A source close to Binance said at the time that Bill Qian’s departure was for purely personal reasons:
As a matter of policy, we do not comment on staff movements at Binance. However, we can confirm that Bill is leaving Binance for personal reasons. “
Nicole Zhang, meanwhile, had held the position of executive director of Binance Labs since April 2020, eventually moving into venture capital at specialist fintech investment fund Lingfeng Capital.
No official announcement has been made yet, but it seems that these 2 positions are available within the company.
In any case, Binance Labs seems to be doing very well, especially in a context where the cryptocurrency market is almost at a standstill. Indeed, the incubator raised $500 million just a few days ago in order to continue supporting various projects in its ecosystem
