Cake DeFi Makes a Strong Start to the Year
Dear Bakers,
The last few months were one of the most challenging, yet also most rewarding in Cake DeFi’s recent history. The first quarter was all about growth which severely stressed each “fiber” of the organization, made it stronger and even more resilient and persistent than ever before in order to be able to maneuver the organization through potential rough waters in the future. In retrospect, this learning process coupled with implementing the right systems and processes in a bid to become a DeFi unicorn by the end of this year, has formed and strengthened the company and the whole Cake DeFi family for the weeks and months ahead.
100k Users and US$ 500 mil in Assets
Besides working on a tighter timeline for a product rollout and innovation cycle to set a new pace in the industry while also staying up to date with the latest industry trends, we were also focussing on increasing our onboarding rate among crypto natives as well as beginners. As a result, we were able to more than triple our user base from previously 31k to an astonishing new total of 100k registered and verified users (see Figure 1).
This was in line with doubling-down on our efforts and core objectives that had the biggest growth impact on our company, while also aligning and creating systems in place to redefine our brand identity. As a result, we were able to triple the user controlled assets on our platform from US$150 mil. to approximately US$500 mil (see Figure 2).
We were also able to grow massively on our social media channels. Among the influential Twitter users we even grew by more than 150% this quarter alone (see Figure 3).
US$ 65 mil Revenue and Net Equity of US$ 40 mil
Update 16th July 2021: following an internal audit, the revenue number has been updated.
Besides tripling our user base and assets held on our platform, we also saw our operating income before taxes, depreciation and amortization rise to US$ 20 mil — without accounting for crypto gains and losses. Due to the fact that we have massively ramped up our marketing budgets coupled with more people joining our company, our operational monthly expenses also hit a new high with US$ 500k per month.
From the US$ 40 mil of Cake DeFi’s net equity, more than US$ 10 mil are attributable to Fiat / stablecoins. This actually gives us a certain degree of freedom, when it comes to tackling long term goals as well as continuing to play a central role in the decentralized finance world. In other words, currently we have enough liquid assets to survive for at least the next 20 months even if in the event revenue would dry up and/or a new crypto winter would come up.
These phenomenal numbers coupled with the recent shareholder buyout not only gives us enough scope of action to pursue our goals, but our rucksack is now much lighter to compete with the bigger operators in the industry.
New Products With High Returns and Low Risk
From the team’s perspective, Q1 felt very much like a continuous, value driven product launch cycle. From the new freezer program — where our bakers can lock up their DFI and DASH coins for additional sweet returns — the various data export features, all the way to the array of new products like additional liquidity mining pools or the support of DeFiChain’s new ERC-20 version of its native DFI token, our team has been busy creating not only tasteful but also value added products for our bakers.
The revamp of our freezer program was definitely one of many new product highlights in Q1. The new program not only benefits the average baker more, but it also redistributes an even bigger share of the “revenue cake” back to the community. For some users this actually means that Cake DeFi will redistribute all of its revenue back to them — which is unparalleled within the industry
Last but not least, we also saw tremendous demand for our newly launched liquidity pools — LTC-DFI and BCH-DFI. Both pools have been very well received and saw a continuous influx of coins, represented by an increase of liquidity tokens. Both pools are among our best performing products, yielding up to 100% APY for our bakers.
Binance Smart Chain
We are still away from becoming a Fintech powerhouse, but with the right attitude and a thoughtful decision-making process we are getting closer to our ambitious goals. We still have some sugary sweet new products in our pipeline which have the potential to disrupt our industry — products like a totally new reward and referral system, Binance Smart Chain integration, new Lending products and our first mobile app to name just a few.
Yet without the valuable feedback and input from our bakers, our products would not even be half as good as they are. That’s why we will continue listening to you and try to incorporate as much of your feedback into building the next iteration of future products.
Becoming a Unicorn!
Our growth trajectory in Q1 2021 was astonishing for such a new company, mostly driven by our amazing team that worked relentlessly over the past three months to make all this happen. Our ambitions remain high, and we would love to see Cake DeFi becoming a unicorn, and achieving 1 mil confirmed registered users with assets totaling $10 bil by the end of 2021.
It’s a huge endeavor, where all stakeholders will have to pull together and deliver accordingly. Though we at Cake DeFi distinguish ourselves from traditional finance and are in agreement with the former head of the ECB Mario Draghi, when he said, “we will do whatever it takes”. This is also our credo when it comes to approaching tasks to be completed in order to achieve our goals.
So rest assured, we at Cake DeFi will do our utmost to bring decentralized finance to the masses, and keep on building a brand with unique products and services that our bakers love.
Sincere thanks to all bakers for your continued support!
Your Cake DeFi Team
