Sushi DAO, the organization behind a once top decentralized cryptocurrency exchange, is banking on a new leader to reshape the struggling business.
(Bloomberg) — Sushi DAO, the organization behind a once top decentralized cryptocurrency exchange, is banking on a new leader to reshape the struggling business.
Jared Grey, elected “head chef,” Sushi’s equivalent to a chief executive officer, has an uphill climb. Several leaders have exited in the past year, and SushiSwap — once an industry darling — has seen the total value of cryptocurrency sent to the platform slide to about $500 million from a peak of $7 billion in November 2021, according to data tracker DefiLlama. Its native Sushi token has dropped more than 95% from an all-time high in March 2021.
DeFi, the next frontier of the cryptocurrency industry, has faced a challenging year overall as prices of tokens crashed, hacks increased and global stocks fell into a bear market, curbing investor appetite for what they see as riskier assets.
With hits to the DeFi industry from within and amid the stocks rout, many top projects have seen their treasuries diminish in value. SushiSwap’s is currently valued at $17 million, with the majority in its Sushi token, compared with more than $50 million as recently as April, according to blockchain data firm Nansen.
Grey, who co-founded a few crypto startups, was among five candidates that made it to the final round and they debated two weeks ago on Sushi’s channel on Discord. He said at the time that the project had “been underserved a little bit by some past leadership.”
“It’s no secret our industry is in flux, with increased scrutiny from regulators, bearish economic sentiment, & a strange post-COVID aura,” Grey tweeted on Monday.
First Tasks
In a Twitter message to Bloomberg News, he said his first tasks will be focusing on revenue and market share growth.
“We have some great products coming out, but need to continue providing more efficient pricing and fee structure for our users and liquid providers,” Grey said.
It’s the second time in a few months that the project has needed to fill the role, after Jonathan Howard said in late August he was unable to step into the job he was elected to a month earlier due to illness. His announcement came after his $800,000-salary package — paid in stablecoin — caused a heated debate in the Sushi community.
In December, Chief Technology Officer Joseph Delong quit, suggesting in a tweet that the organization needed a “radical structural transformation.”
Members of the community are looking to Grey to improve both its structure and Sushi’s products.
Conflict Resolution
“Sushi had a flat hierarchy which caused some issues for us in the past, and conflict resolution was an issue,” Sarang Parikh, a core developer of SushiSwap, said in a Twitter message. “It was difficult to coordinate with people and come to a decision,”
In cases of such conflicts, the new head chef “would have a larger say,” Parikh said.
Despite the internal drama, SushiSwap — which was built in 2020 on the code of Uniswap, another top decentralized exchange — had initially gained popularity because of its grassroots community. Uniswap, on the other hand, is known for its big venture-capital backers such as Andreessen Horowitz and the main entity supporting its business, Uniswap Labs.
“Sushi has a lot of firepower which we failed to channel earlier,” Parikh said. And with the current bear market in equities “it does get challenging, but it only makes us work harder.”
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