Apeswap (BANANA) is a decentralized exchange (DEX) for BEP-20 tokens on Binance Smart Chain (BSC). It offers a complete toolkit for DeFi purposes, including token swaps, liquidity provision, staking, lending and borrowing, IDOs, and margin trading. Apeswap is one of the largest DEXs in the Binance ecosystem and has partnerships with projects like FRAX, LUNR, KAI, and Animoca Brands. Its mission is to provide accessible financial opportunities through transparency, security, and support, while its vision is to decentralize traditional finance and create a fair economy through a community-driven DAO.

Apeswap was launched in 2021 and consists of a team of over 15 members, each presented behind avatars like Harambe or Donkey Kong. The co-founders include ApeGuru (Expert Full Stack Developer), ApeTastic (Expert Smart Contract Developer), Harambe Nakamoto (Tokenomics, Analytics, and Engineering), DK (Business Development and Marketing), and Obie Dobo (King of the Community Jungle). Despite their anonymity, the team has detailed profiles and has been working on the project for almost a year, reducing the likelihood of it being a rug pull. Apeswap does not disclose any investors on its site.

Apeswap offers a standard toolkit for DeFi purposes, with its core product being the decentralized exchange. It allows users to swap between more than 150 tokens on BNB and Polygon, with low trading fees of 0.20%. Apeswap plans to release leverage trading in Q1 2022. Other key features include yield farms, auto-compounding vaults, burning vaults, and IDOs known as "Initial Ape Offerings." Additionally, Apeswap has a non-fungible ape (NFA) auction house and plans to create non-fungible bananas in partnership with Liquid Collectibles.

Apeswap operates with a dual-token model: BANANA and GNANA. BANANA incentivizes liquidity providers, while GNANA provides governance access and exclusive benefits. BANANA has various use cases, including staking, buying GNANA, lending on the platform, and swapping for other tokens. BANANA is an inflationary token with no cap on its total supply. Currently, 316,800 BANANA are emitted daily, distributed across yield farms, the BANANA pool, the lending network, bonds, the dev wallet, and burned. Apeswap plans to transition BANANA into a deflationary token through buybacks, burns, and other mechanisms.

Apeswap operates on Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Polygon. BSC uses a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism with elected validators who stake Binance Coin (BNB) to validate transactions. Polygon is a layer-two scaling solution of Ethereum. Apeswap has been audited by DeFi Yield, Certik, and BSC Gemz, and no critical vulnerabilities were found.

BANANA is available on Apeswap, Pancakeswap (V2), MEXC, and Bitrue. To learn more about buying cryptocurrencies, you can refer to our guide.