Cake DeFi Review: put your crypto to work and build your portfolio on autopilot

You can’t keep working for money forever, that’s financial slavery. It’s time to put your money to work for you and start growing your wealth on autopilot with Cake DeFi.

After 7 months of sitting on the fence, I decided to go into the Cake DeFi rabbit hole. But not without doing some research and risk analysis first.

This Cake DeFi review is the product of that research and I hope that it helps you form an informed opinion of the platform.

Before we dive into the details of this Cake DeFi review, let’s take a quick look at the Pros and Cons of the project.

Cake DeFi review: Pros and Cons

Pros

• They have their own blockchain which tells me they came to build and stay.
• The platform is backed by a duly registered company and founded by known and verifiable people.
• Promotes transparency and tries to live up to the standard.
• Offers attractive APYs and multiple earning opportunities.
• Sustainable business model. A closer look shows that their returns and bonuses are justifiable and sustainable.
• Cake DeFi maintains an emergency insurance fund called “the Secret Cookie Stash (SCS)” to protect users’ funds against any potential future losses arising from hacks, exploits, etc.

Cons

• There’s no public record of an audit report.
• The CEO is known to have been previously involved in some controversial projects.
• To earn the high APYs they advertised, you have to lock up your crypto for very long periods.
• Cake DeFi is not available in all jurisdictions. You will need to check if the platform supports your country.
• The base lending APY on Cake DeFi is relatively low.
• Supports a very limited number of coins.

What is Cake DeFi?

Cake DeFi is a cryptocurrency lending, borrowing, liquidity mining, and staking platform that allows you to deposit your crypto assets and earn returns of up to 72% APY.

The platform is owned by Cake Pte Ltd, a Singapore-based company with registration number 201918368M.

Cake DeFi is a member of the Singapore Fintech Association (SFA) and the Association of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Enterprises and Start-ups Singapore (ACCESS).

I ran a simple search on the SFA website and found their membership record.

Who founded Cake DeFi?

Cake DeFi was founded by Dr Julian Hosp (CEO & Co-founder) and U-Zyn Chua (CTO & Co-founder) in early 2019 with a mission to “solve major financial pain points in people’s lives”.

To paraphrase, to give everyone, easy and free access to financial services and the opportunity to make money in genuine ways.

Julian is a serial entrepreneur, international blockchain expert, medical doctor, and ex-professional athlete.

U-Zyn on the other hand is said to be one of the early contributors to the Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dash projects —a pioneer in the emergence of blockchain technology.

You can learn more about the founders and the Cake DeFi team on their team’s page.

Cake DeFi review: How does it work?

Cake DeFi is a platform that allows you to deposit your crypto assets and earn rewards or interest on them.

Before you can deposit your crypto and start earning on the platform, you have to signup and complete KYC.

Then you can proceed to make your first deposit and earn your first reward on the platform through the famous Cake DeFi welcome bonus program.

Cake DeFi bonus

When you make a first-time deposit of $50 or more, you get a welcome bonus of $30 in DFI.

DFI is the native cryptocurrency of the Cake DeFi platform. The coin is used to reward Cake DeFi users, promoters, and liquidity providers, among other use cases.

To qualify for the $30 Cake DeFi bonus, you must signup with a referral link or code 306386. Otherwise, you will get $20 instead of a $30 welcome bonus.

The bonus will be locked up for 180 days in the Cake DeFi Freezer and it automatically earns staking rewards for you during this time.

After 6 months, you can withdraw the bonus and all the interest generated if you want or restake it to continue earning.

But why do they lock my bonus?

They don’t want people to just signup, claim the welcome bonus and disappear.

So freezing for 6 months and paying rewards on it while you’re waiting for it to be released sounds like a fair deal.

However, note that you can withdraw your original capital and all earned rewards at any time.

Earning on Cake DeFi

There’re three (3) different ways you can put your crypto assets to work on Cake DeFi and start making money right away. These are through:

1. Liquidity mining
2. Staking
3. Lending

Let’s discuss each of these ways to put your crypto to work on Cake DeFi below.

1. Liquidity mining

Cake DeFi allows you to deposit your favourite coins into shared liquidity mining pools to earn mining rewards.

You can also add liquidity to dToken pools which are tokenized stocks of traditional companies paired against the DeFiChain USD (DUSD).

These dTokens are not linked in any way to the real stocks they represent, and you don’t own any shares or voting rights or earn dividends from the companies by holding the dTokens.

When you provide liquidity on Cake DeFi, it is used to trade on the DeFiChain DEX, and you get a cut of all the trading fees generated in the pool as a reward.

In addition to that, you also earn a share of the new DFI coins being produced every block as an extra reward.

Cake DeFi automatically harvests both rewards and adds them to your original capital through auto-compounding to help you grow your money faster.

When you provide liquidity on Cake DeFi, there’re no lock-ups. So, you can withdraw your original capital and all earned mining rewards at any time you want.

But you can choose to lock up your liquidity provider (LP) tokens in the Freezer for between 1 month to 10 years to boost your earnings and also enjoy a 15% to 85% rebate on the liquidity mining fees.

2. Staking

Currently, you can stake your DFI and DASH coins on Cake DeFi and earn up to 31% and 5.8% APY respectively.

When you stake your coins with Cake DeFi you’re issued staking shares, which is more like a receipt of your deposit into the staking pool.

There’s a maximum amount of staking shares each pool can accommodate, and once this is reached, further deposits are not accepted, except existing users withdraw from the pool.

There’re no lock-up periods with Cake DeFi staking. So, you can withdraw your original capital and staking rewards at any time you want.

But you can choose to lock up your staking shares in the Freezer for between 1 month to 10 years to boost your earnings, and also enjoy a 15% to 75% rebate on the staking fees.

3. Lending

You can lend your Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), USDC, and USDT on Cake DeFi and earn up to 6.5% interest on your deposit.

Cake DeFi offers new lending batches every week, each of which lasts for 4 weeks. You can deposit your crypto into any of the batches and it will be locked for the next 4 weeks.

Each lending batch is capped at a certain amount. Once this limit is reached, no more deposits would be accepted, and you will have to wait until the net batch to invest more.

However, if you have very deep pockets and want to invest more than the pool can accommodate, in a particular batch, you can contact the team to discuss terms.

Now, when the 4-week lock-up period is over, you can decide to:

• auto-compound (automatically rollover) into the next batch,
• withdraw only your rewards, or
• withdraw your original capital and all rewards into your account.

Furthermore, there’re no lending fees on Cake DeFi as the company claims to receive commissions directly from its partners, so you get to keep all your earned interests. 

Cake DeFi fees

There are 4 different types of fees you pay on Cake DeFi. These include:

1. Deposit fees
2. Withdrawal fees
3. Reward fees
4. Swap fees

Let’s briefly explain each of these fees below.

1. Deposit fees

When you deposit ETH, USDT, USDC, or any ERC20 token, Cake DeFi charges you a one-time address creation fee of $35 in the coin or token being deposited.

The company claims newly generated Ethereum addresses come at a high cost to them, hence, the deposit fee for these tokens.

However, this is a one-time fee and it applies to only ETH and all Ethereum-based (ERC20) tokens.

Furthermore, there are no deposit fees for BTC, DFI, DASH, DOGE, BCH, etc.

Click here to learn more about the Cake DeFi deposit fee.

2. Withdrawal fees

Cake DeFi charges a small fee on all withdrawals to cover blockchain gas and administrative costs.

The fee is constantly adjusted based on current market conditions with an aim to offer the most competitive rates.

You will see the prevailing withdrawal fee in your dashboard when trying to make a withdrawal request or you can click here to check the current fixed withdrawal fee rates.

3. Reward fees

Cake DeFi charges a 15% fee on your staking rewards plus an additional fixed $10 per node every month which is shared by all stakers in proportion to their staking shares.

Click here to learn more about the reward fees.

4. Swap fees

Cake DeFi charges a 0.5% fee on swaps, for normal users.

VIP members enjoy lower swap fees as follows:

• Journeyman 0.45%
• Patissier 0.4%
• Confectioner 0.35%
• Master baker 0.3% fee

Click here to learn more about the Cake DeFi swap fees.

Cake DeFi risks

Nothing comes without risks, especially when it’s about making money, and Cake DeFi is not an exception.

Below are some of the potential risks of investing your crypto with Cake DeFi.

• The company may go bankrupt in the future due to unforeseen circumstances.
• Hacks and exploits are real threats to every crypto project. They could be hacked or exploited beyond what their insurance fund can cover and your crypto may be lost forever.
• The team can decide to rug everybody and disappear with your money.
• DFI price could drop significantly in value due to inflation and if you’re exposed to it too much, you’ll lose money as a result.
• Rewards will eventually drop to insanely low levels as DFI emissions continue to reduce over time.

Cake DeFi review: FAQ

Below are some of the frequently asked questions about Cake DeFi. If you have other questions, feel free to ask in the comments of this post or on our social media.

1. Is Cake DeFi legit?

One thing is clear, Cake DeFi is not an outright scam. There’re known faces and names behind the project and it’s duly registered in Singapore. On these notes, we can say it’s legit.

Furthermore, the company is said to be awaiting approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) but is currently already authorised to provide its services under an exemption.

They also claim to have passed a security assessment by Cure53 and received positive remarks. But I’m not satisfied with this as there should be a real audit report publicly available for verification as is customary in crypto.

2. Is Cake DeFi sustainable?

We know that Cake DeFi is legit and not an outright scam. But are the rewards being paid out justified and sustainable?

Most of the rewards you earn on Cake DeFi are in the DFI coin, except for the in-kind interest earnings from their lending service which are paid from real revenue.

DFI is the native coin of their own blockchain network called DeFiChain. New DFI coins are produced daily through block emissions.

So, as long as the blockchain keeps running, there would be DFI to pay out rewards until the maximum supply of 1.2 billion is reached.

To answer our question, I believe the Cake DeFi rewards are sustainable as the source of the income used to pay out rewards is reliable.

However, as the block emissions reduce, so will the APY offered on staking and liquidity mining on the platform. It will continue to drop as fewer DFI are created. But the lending APY should be on par with the rest of the crypto market.

Cake DeFi review: more ways to earn

Clearly, the more crypto assets you deposit on Cake DeFi, the bigger your rewards, after all, it takes money to make money.

However, if you don’t have enough capital to invest to earn significant rewards, there 2 great ways you can earn crypto for free with Cake DeFi.

These are, through the:

1. Referral program
2. Learn and Earn program

Let’s discuss these two ways to earn more crypto with Cake DeFi below.

1. Cake DeFi referral program

When you help others to earn on Cake DeFi, you earn too through the referral program.

You can tell others about Cake DeFi and when they signup on the platform using your referring link or code, you earn between 0.25% to 1% of their investments every year.

Your referral percentage depends on how many people you have referred to the platform. For example:

• 1 person = 0.25%
• 3 people = 0.5%
• 6 people = 0.75%
• 10+ people = 1%

Your referral rewards are paid out every Monday in the same coins that each referral is earning, except for liquidity mining, where the referral reward is paid in DFI.

2. Cake DeFi Learn and Earn

You can participate in the Cake DeFi Learn and Earn programs to learn about various cryptocurrencies and how they work and get rewarded with free crypto.

Note that earning in the learn and earn program is not guaranteed as the rewards are limited and on a first-come-first-serve basis.

So whenever the next Cake DeFi Learn and Earn program is active, you have to act fast and be among the first to finish the quiz before the reward is exhausted.

Conclusion

Cake DeFi is a cryptocurrency platform where you can put your money to work and grow your portfolio passively with minimal risk.

The platform offers 3 different investment products which include: liquidity mining, staking, and lending with competitive rates.

However, it doesn’t come without some controversies and drawbacks.

First, the CEO is known to have been involved in some controversial projects in the past.

Secondly, the platform does not have a publicly verifiable audit report. What I’ve found is a security assessment report by Cure53.

That said, the platform is worth exploring as an avenue for passive crypto income. But ensure to do your own research (DYOR) and only invest money you can afford to lose.

What do you think about Cake DeFi? Share with us in the comments section below.

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