We know blockchain projects by their tokens, their ATHs, their market caps, their APYs, and their features. However, projects are built by humans, by their skills, their decisions, their talents, and sometimes by their faults: what we know little about.

Sushiswap is one of the most prominent DeFi projects.  We know the project  by numerous liquidity pools on various blockchains, by diverse products and by SUSHI token. However, Sushiswap has also interesting history behind the scene orchestrated by the actions and decisions of talented people.

In this short blog, I will tell the story of Sushiswap  by focusing on those people.

How it started ...

On August 28th, 2020 SushiSwap was launched as 'a truly decentralized AMM protocol'. The protocol that initially almost everyone thought was "just another fork", soon turned into a project that was distinct from all other projects in different aspects. It differentiated from Uniswap by introducing the governance token, SUSHI. This characterized it as the first community-governed DeFi protocol.

The start of Sushiswap was unprecedented. The still unaudited protocol broke $700M in total value locked in a few days and $1,8B in only 10 days. In the first week, Sushiswap was listed by the two most important centralized exchanges: Binance and FTX.  Everything was ready for the most exciting, promising rapid growth of a Defi project.

Since love seemed easy at first, but soon difficulties occurred.

Hafiz

How it was evolved ...

In the midst of taking place voting for the first proposal of Sushiswap governance,  migrating from Uniswap, and  other fascinating developments "difficulties occurred." 

The core contributor and semi-anonymous founding member of Sushiswap, Chef Nomi, converted a portion of SUSHI tokens, meant for the development of the SushiSwap ecosystem, to $13M ether (ETH). This action resulted in fierce internal criticism and  fear among Sushi holders. It  led to speculations that SushiSwap is a scam, and Nomi had exited the project. As a result, in a half-day the SUSHI price dropped around 50%.

Nomi tried to respond to critics, justify his decision and explain his action:

I did the recent move because I care about the community. I'm taking IL for you. But all I received was blaming and FUDing. Here's what happened. The devshare part of me. I converted them to $ETH. I stop caring about price and I will focus on the technicality of the migration.

Tweet, published on September 5th, 2020  

Explanations were not accepted by the community and critics continued. The day after Nomi  announced that "I'm considering transitioning the admin control of MasterChef and devshare address to a MultiSig address behind timelock."

Then on September 6th, Chef Nomi transferred the control of sushiswap to the FTX CTO, Bankman-Fried.

Sam Bankman-Fried managed the situation perfectly. He first criticized intensively Nomi's action. Then, offered some suggestions for transitions. Sushiswap was built on Serum and Bankman-Fried added $5 million from his own assets to sushiswap back.

To everyone. I f**ked up. And I am sorry.

Chef Nomi tweeted on September 11th, 2020

How it is going ...

As Chef Nomi said in his last Tweet "Sushi migration went successfully and the journey of Sushiswap began".

$SUSHI migration went successfully and the journey of @SushiSwap  began. I was fortunate to have a chance to help in the background and it was a very enjoyable moment in my life. Congrats for the successful migration!

Sushiswap is now in the top 10 decentralized exchanges (DEXes) in terms of swap volume in 24h ($194,831,123) according to Coin Market Cap. It has the broadest set of liquidity pools with about $2B total locked value.

Sushiswap has now in total 0.5M users. One study for the end of last year, shows that Sushiswap has more than 1200 weekly active users  and more than 1M weekly transactions.  

The top 10 largest liquidity pools on Sushiswap hosted daily more than 10K swaps with a volume of more than $3M. 

Sushiswap currently has a broad and large financial ecosystem offering a "variety of features such as yield farming and earning high interest rates, lending and borrowing assets against collateral with interest received or owing, and swapping hundreds of available digital assets with different pools."

Here is the list of some of its successful products:

• Kashi Lending
• SushiSwap Exchange
• Sushi Yield Farms
• SushiBar Staking (xSUSHI)

Sushiswap as a fork of Uniswap compete its origin in many aspects including gas fee and total value locked.

The development of Sushiswap is unique among blockchain projects in terms of its interaction with the people behind it. A brave team launched the project. One of the prominent members of the very team pushed the project to the brink of failure. And one person from the outside of the team was able to tackle the crisis in a timely moment and managed to keep the growth of the project. 

Suggested reading:

• The Sushi Chronicles 
• The rise, fall, and rise of Sushiswap
• TVL Sushi vs. Uni
• Sushi Financial Ecosystem