Hi Mooni,
The staking APR for a 4 year lock is higher than 3.65% on a CAKE basis. Cakepie and StakeDAO, which are staking CAKE for 4 years and which are staking on the same veCAKE pool as all users, show that as the APRs they’re passing back to users are in the range of 17-30%. These protocols are generally on 4-year locks.
Second, the introduction of the veCAKE has brought in external vote incentives which veCAKE holders are entitled to when they help build project liquidity on PancakeSwap. I’ve discussed this in more detail here - hopefully you will take a look here (https://twitter.com/chef_mochi/status/1753381123739303994).
While I appreciate that the staking yield system is less intuitive than before, veCAKE has attracted external projects to provide vote incentives to veCAKE holders. This has allowed veCAKE stakers to benefit from additional rewards while keeping CAKE inflation negative. Unlike many fiat systems, where the underlying monetary base is inflating, CAKE has been mostly deflationary since Q3 of 2023 and yields earned by veCAKE are not diluted by underlying inflation.
We appreciate the feedback that the CAKE staking has become more complicated. We are still in the early stages of rolling veCAKE out, and will seek to improve the UIUX of the PCS ecosystem over this year to make vote incentives more accessible to users who do not want to venture outside of the PancakeSwap protocol. In the meantime, we encourage you to explore the vote incentive ecosystem as CAKE’s yield ecosystem is much more diverse now.