Operating on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), PancakeSwap is a decentralized exchange (DEX), and which functions, more specifically, as an automated market maker (AMM), according to Messari.

CAKE serves as PancakeSwap’s native currency. It’s a governance token granting holders the right to vote on future changes to the protocol, CoinGecko said.

CAKE, per Messari, is distributed to liquidity providers in exchange for staked LP tokens.

A hard fork of SushiSwap, PancakeSwap utilizes a nearly identical codebase but benefits from the enhanced speed, scale, and cost savings of the BSC (Messari).

As a DEX, PancakeSwap doesn’t use an order book for harvesting and routing trading flows; nor is it reliant on centralized market makers. Rather, users trade against a collection of deposits supplied by a global network of liquidity providers. The assets within “liquidity pools” of deposits are priced via PancakeSwap’s AMM.

As of early April 2022, according to DeFiLlama, PancakeSwap had a Total Value Locked (TVL) just north of $5 billion, making it the 10th-largest DeFi project based on TVL. Note, PancakeSwap’s TVL is $1.3 billion more than its next of kin, SushiSwap, the 12th-largest DeFi project.