New SushiSwap Head Chef Vows To 'Return Sushi To Its Rightful Status'

Sushi DAO wants to regain some of the value SushiSwap SUSHI/USD hemorrhaged in September with the election of new head chef Jared Grey.

Grey, founder of Bitfineon and Eons Finance, was chosen by Sushi DAO from among five candidates, following weeks of lively debate on their Discord.

Sushi DAO said in a blog post:

Voter turnout hit 13 million votes, with nearly 11 million votes (84%) in favor of Grey, the company confirmed.

"Ten months after 0xMaki's departure, the team is excited to welcome a candidate with the right expertise, experience, and the ability to represent Sushi 2.0 best."

OxMaki is another founder of SushiSwap who became the de facto leader of the project following Nomi's departure. However, he wished to stay anonymous and did not want to remain the leader. OxMaki said in a forum post:

"We had a crazy journey going from launching a yield farm to migrating almost over a billion dollars in the very first 'vampire attack' from Uniswap UNI/USD  to Sushiswap. Experimenting with human greed when Chef Nomi decided to 'rug pull' the community before sending back the funds. 

I'll be moving away from day-to-day operations into an advisory role to help foster the next generation of teams building on top of Sushi, supporting from the sideline, and helping without affiliation the broader DeFi ecosystem regardless of where they are deployed."

Chef Nomi was once a great success story in DeFi for building an empire with a peak value of $7 billion in November 2021. Nomi and the other founders forked Uniswap and added a secret ingredient in their new SushiSwap, allowing users to earn SUSHI tokens by staking through liquidity providers (LP). In September, Nomi liquidated his own position and abandoned his creation by selling a stake in the project for 37,400 ETH — worth $13 million at the time.

Nomi resigned and handed control of the project to investor Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX. 

In response to his appointment, Grey tweeted:

"I'm honored & excited to accept the Head Chef role at SushiSwap. This is an opportunity to leverage my experience to help the team succeed in delivering innovative DeFi solutions and returning Sushi to its rightful status among its peers.

The Sushi team is lean & tenacious; my job now is to help them excel. We look forward to the future & what it brings, & rest assured, Sushi will be there - bigger & better than ever. Cheers!"

SushiSwap has been plagued with security issues and infighting in addition to a steady slide in token value typical of the cryptocurrency bear market. The SUSHI token plummeted 73% in value when Chef Nomi resigned and cashed out, according to CoinGecko, dropping from $4.44 to $1.20 over the subsequent 18 hours. At the time of writing, the SUSHI token is $1.13, after a slight increase at the announcement of Grey's appointment.

Benzinga's Take: Sushi DAO is smart to look for new leadership and a head chef with more decision-making power. Decisive action will be required to regain the trust of users and a clearly identifiable and accountable leader is a worthwhile start.

Image: Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay