Election Of New Head Chef Bolsters Sentiment Around Troubled DEX

GoldenTree, a privately-held firm with $50B in assets under management, has bought and staked $5.2M worth of SUSHI tokens. The American asset manager disclosed its positionon Oct. 5 in Sushi’s governance forum. 

SUSHI rose 10% as market participants cheered the news. Sushiswap is a decentralized exchange with $500M in total value locked across 18 blockchains.

SUSHI Price, Source: The Defiant Terminal

GoldenTree will provide its expertise to Sushi’s core development team in the areas of tokenomics, design, and strategy. Moreover, to establish its commitment and transparency, the firm has publicly revealed the wallet containing its SUSHI holdings. 

“We believe Sushi has incredible potential. Although the community has certainly been through some tough challenges, we’ve been amazed at the resilience of both the core team and the community in the face of these speed bumps, as you all have continued to build and release top-tier products.” GoldenTree said.

New Management

Sushiswap has been in turmoil since co-founder 0xMaki left the project just over a year ago. Subsequent community infighting led to CTO Joseph Delong quitting the project in December 2021.

0xMaki Says he ‘Won’t be Returning’ to SushiSwap as it Wallows in a Leadership Crisis

resigning. One of token holders biggest hopes throughout — as price and volume slips — has been that core developer 0xMaki would return. Those hopes may be dashed.

0xMaki was pivotal to the project’s success, as he helped establish Sushiswap with the now-infamous Chef Nomi. During his tenure as Head Chef, the project added new features and became a worthy challenger to Uniswap, the leading DEX. Sushiswap attained DeFi darling status with him at the helm.

Sushiswap appears to be turning a corner after the community voted in a new Head Chef earlier this week. On Oct. 3, Jared Grey was officially elected to the position by a landslide.

The process of choosing a new Head Chef was anything but smooth. On July 26, Jonathan Howard was nominated by the Sushi team but the community cried foul as the proposed compensation was unreasonably high. This led to a community vote which saw the compensation package for the position get slashed.

TVL Drop

The new Head Chef certainly has his work cut out for him.

Sushiswap’s TVL stands at just over $500M, down more than 90% from its peak of nearly $7B in November 2021.

While the bear market has taken its toll on asset prices and trading volumes, leading DEXs Uniswap and Curve have managed to retain a far larger proportion of liquidity, at $5B and $6B respectively.

Sushi TVL + Uniswap TVL + Curve TVL, Source: The Defiant Terminal