PancakeSwap (CAKE) DEX Achieves New All-Time High in Trading Volume, Reaching $205.3 Billion in Q1 2025

This marks the highest trading activity since the platform's inception. In addition to the surge in trading volume, PancakeSwap has also seen a significant increase in user participation

Multi-chain decentralized exchange (DEX) PancakeSwap (CAKE) has reached a major milestone, hitting an all-time high of $205.3 billion in quarterly trading volume for Q1 2025, the highest since the platform’s inception.

The platform has also seen the highest number of unique traders and transaction activity since Q4 2021, highlighting the strong start to the year for the exchange.

PancakeSwap’s trading volume soared as high as $81.7 billion in February, marking the highest monthly trading volume since 2021.

To put this in perspective, the DEX managed to achieve a trading volume of $78.4 billion in January, while March saw a slight slowdown in growth, with the volume reaching $45.1 billion.

However, even with this slowdown, the impressive performance in Q1 2025 brought the total trading volume to a staggering $1.3 trillion.

“With 2025 already off to an explosive start, the protocol is seeing record momentum in both user engagement and ecosystem activity,” the exchange said in a statement.

Indeed, the rise isn’t something new, but the momentum has been building steadily since 2023.

In the last two years, PancakeSwap’s quarterly trading volume shot up from $20.1 billion in Q1 2023 to a record $205.3 billion in Q1 2025, representing a remarkable 922% increase.

This surge in trading volume was accompanied by significant gains in user engagement. The number of unique traders on the platform grew by 81%.

This brought the total to 5.8 million in Q1 2025, the highest level since Q4 2021, compared to 3.2 million in Q1 2023.

Similarly, transaction activity on the platform saw substantial growth. The transaction counts jumped from 44.1 million in Q1 2023 to 114.4 million in Q1 2025.

“These figures represent not only PancakeSwap’s best quarter to date, but also highlight a significant leap in adoption and usage across the board,” the exchange added.

The milestone comes as PancakeSwap enters a new phase with the official implementation of CAKE Tokenomics 3.0, which began on April 23.

This will see several changes, including the discontinuation of CAKE staking, veCAKE, and related mechanisms.

Instead, the platform will shift to a burn mechanism, targeting an annual burn of approximately 5.3 million tokens.

Additionally, daily CAKE emissions will be phased down from 29,000 to 20,000. The ultimate goal is to bring it as low as 14,500 tokens, signaling a shift toward greater sustainability.