Cake DeFi To Buy Out External Investors - Agree To Burn 400 Mil USD Worth Of DFI Coins

TL.DR:

• Cake DeFi is now fully owned by its founders and employees.
• Approximately US$400m worth of DFI will be burnt by Cake DeFi.
• Close-to-Cake-related-persons now hold approximately 40 million DFI, which get unlocked at approximately 30,000 DFI per day over the course of 10 years.
• The two founders together have invested approx. US$4m of their personal funds into DFI and now own close to 9 million DFI combined. 100% of these DFI are part of a staggered 10-year special non-voting, non-staking freezer system.

FULL:

Cake DeFi, a pioneering financial services company with an intuitive platform dedicated to empowering users to generate cash flow and earn interest on their crypto assets, has today announced that it has completed an equity repurchase program to become entirely team member-owned.

The company which was founded on June 7, 2019, by U-Zyn Chua and Julian Hosp had initially raised a startup and seed capital investment from angel investors as part of its launch. On April 9, 2021, at 02:20 Singapore Local Time (SGT), the company had successfully negotiated an agreement with its external investors to repurchase that equity for an undisclosed amount.

The investors’ exit agreement will entitle Cake DeFi to initiate a DFI coin burn with a value of approximately US$400m. These DFI were part of the initial airdrop fund to Cake customers in June 2020, but were agreed to be kept in trust by Cake DeFi to ensure none of these amounts were to be sold, staked or utilized for DeFiChain's community voting proposals. The DFI, which accounts for circulating supply, will be sent to a traceable address to be burned, which will be verifiably irrecoverable.

Julian Hosp, CEO and Co-Founder, Cake DeFi said, “Being willing to burn $400m in personal coins and thereby decreasing supply, shows just how committed and focused we are to the long-term prospects of Cake DeFi and DeFiChain. In addition to investing my personal finances into both Cake and DeFiChain, I have and will continue to invest a significant amount of my time and energy into growing these projects! I hope that the burn, together with the share buyback, and the full transparency over my personal DFI holdings — which is my second largest crypto position, highlights just how much confidence U-Zyn and I have in the future of both Cake DeFi and DeFiChain. I believe this will be perceived really well by the community.”

In addition, Cake DeFi will openly provide full transparency on the DFI holdings of its current 50-60 “close-to-Cake-related-persons”: After this burn, ex-investors and employees will hold approximately 40 million DFI), or just under 10% of the circulating supply. These DFI were acquired on the open market and then compounded via cash flow methods such as staking and liquidity mining, on the platform. The vast majority of these DFI were agreed by all parties to be put into special freezers on Cake DeFi, which do not provide cash flow or allow vote casting, and get unlocked at an approximate rate of 30,000 DFI per day over the next 10 years.

U-Zyn Chua, CTO and Co-Founder of Cake DeFi added, “This is a big step towards further decentralization of DeFiChain, which, along with the DeFiChain Pink Paper, brings us one step closer to our end goal. I trust that this will pave the way for us to have a great on-chain governance towards fulfilling a secure, robust and vibrant native DeFi blockchain that is owned collectively by its users.”

The DFI burn, which affects the two founders’ personal DFI holdings significantly, will now see them owning close to 9 million DFI combined, or just above 2% of the circulating supply. This allocation is part of the aforementioned 40m DFI.

To date, they have invested approximately US$4m of their personal wealth into DFI, and both are planning to buy more, especially when the price experience dips. In a show of good faith, and as part of their full trust in, and their continued commitment to DeFiChain, 100% of these DFI — despite them having been acquired freely — have been committed into the special non-staking, non-voting freezer system in various time lengths over the next 10 years.