Over the past month, SushiSwap DEX, a decentralised exchange forked from UniSwap, has made waves in the DeFi community – but not in a good way. This began after former SushiSwap team members claimed that 0xMaki, a key developer for SushiSwap, was kicked out of the project rather than voluntarily stepping down as originally believed.
According to leaked screenshots, it turned out that 0xMaki did not choose to leave SushiSwap, but was fired in a vote orchestrated by Joseph Delong, the CTO of the exchange, which subsequently led to other devs like 0xKeno, LevX and Mudit Gupta also leaving.
“@0xMaki was kicked out. Most of the good devs have left. Seems like greed sadly has taken over from community,” tweeted BoringCrypto, a former non-core SushiSwap developer. Sources also told Rekt News (DeFi journalism) that there was an inner circle of power consisting of Joseph Delong, Omakase, Keno, and Rachel (abbreviated as JOKR). These claims were backed with various screenshots of increasingly questionable behaviour by JOKR, including:
- Extravagant overspending with $9,000 dinners, $5,000 tickets for VC event;
- Keeping funds that were supposed to be given to xSushi holders;
- Uneven distribution among the team, where JOKR received more bonuses than everybody else;
- Toxic infighting within the team, constant polling by certain JOKR members to fire one another.
Delong addressed these allegations as ‘absurd defamation’. Although his tweet acknowledged that some former team members didn’t like him, Delong was firm on his claim that most were justifiably asked to leave on the basis of poor performance or inability to collaborate with a team. This eventually led to Delong threatening to leave the project if the community did not back the current team.
Conclusion of the drama
Just days after addressing this debacle on Twitter, Delong announced his resignation. This came on December 8, which the former chief technology officer announced through an embedded message in an Ethereum transaction.
Source: Blockworks
Following his resignation, Delong posted an article titled ‘My Failures in Leadership at Sushi’. This article would go on to detail the lack of planning and organisation, along with communication issues, and the infighting among contributors long before things became public.
“In the end ultimately I failed to deliver because of my compounding failures and will incorporate this knowledge into my next project. I think the imperfect birth of Sushi has led to additional problems and in my next project I will have the capability to structure an organization to empower the contributors. Thank you for allowing me to lead Sushi through this time and wish Sushi the best of luck. Long live Sushi.”
Delong has also taken to his personal Twitter to comment further on his tenure at SushiSwap. This was met with mixed reactions in the community. Some have labelled him as unprofessional or inconsiderate to stakeholders, while others have commended him for his willingness to speak up.
Consequences of unprofessionalism
In the days following the resignation of Delong, Sushi’s price has seen a noticeable drop. While it’s still too early to make any educated predictions on SushiSwap’s future going forward, we do have one objective and undeniable fact. The toxic environment within the project, along with the airing of internal issues, has led to Sushi losing around 80% of its value since its all-time high. This is a stark example of a lack of a clear hierarchical governance structure combined with unprofessionalism. Going forward, the developers and the community will have to bear these consequences.
Other similar incidents
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time that internal affairs have made waves in the crypto space. In October this year, the DeFi community discovered an analyst (from Divergence Ventures, a crypto venture fund) who had obtained $2.5 million in RBN tokens through morally questionable means, which sparked a debate about ethicality.
Or in August, regarding the suspicion over Binance.US CEO Brian Brooks abruptly resigned from his position after just a few months on the job – with users in the community speculating about internal issues and whether there could be bigger complications related to Binance coming down the road.