Scrolling up and down on crypto twitter as usual looking for updates, news, and well,  something interesting about my favorite coins. 😁 I won’t tell you. It was a weekend, so I had to rest and enjoy the show, crypto markets are not doing well- all blood red. P.S. That wasn’t enjoyable at all, it’s as if my heart would pop out, but I have already seen that kind of season, so it’s alright. 

A CEO who Stole funds and Stood with it? 

Then came was this post about Sushi CEO selling the dev share of 20,039 ETH and 2,558,644 SUSHI (~$15Million):

“Anonymous founder of @SushiSwap

 sells all of his $SUSHI Sushi… WHO COULD HAVE POSSIBLY PREDICTED THIS?!”

I never knew anything about Sushi and to be honest, I really felt bad for the investors. I began investigating. The first shouting fact was of the CEO who said he didn’t exit scam which was somewhat funny because that exactly is what it looked like:

“People asked if I exited scam. I did not. I am still here. I will continue to participate in the discussion. I will help with the technical part. I will help ensure we have a successful migration.”

But his claim is right, the first Sushiswap blog post stated that the dev share is 10%. The only thing is that he pulled the plug too early. That is morally wrong. Though, no one really sets a standard that there is a particular time for devs to withdraw their funds but people who do strengthens investors’ trust in them. That is a discussion for another day. 

Zombie Mining Protocol 

Sushi was supposed to be a zombie mining protocol sucking the liquidity out of Uniswap. It was literally a fork, a copy of codes which promised a new governance model with huge returns. Zombie mining uses the liquidity of an established look-alike protocol to fuel its own. It zaps the former dry and uses its strength to thrive but pays investors higher returns. That was the magnetic force that attracted so many people. The CEO made a wrong turn, the Sushi price took a nose-dive 88% down in a few hours. 

The community went Guns Blazing- Who to blame is next

Nomi (Sushi CEO) wasn’t the only one to take the fires. Changpeng Zhao, Binance CEO, seemingly took the next hit. Binance had listed the token, with “no due diligence” as many people opined because it went against the acclaimed Binance standard of “no relationship with an anonymous CEO”. In a deleted tweet he stated:

“For SUSHI, I don’t know who the founder is. If we don’t list new DeFi coins, traffic goes to other exchanges, and we become obsolete. We provide access to liquidity, we don’t force you to buy. All coins are high risk, especially DeFi.”

This spurred more anger in a hurting community and more to the fact that he later deleted the tweet. 

A Saviour in the Midst of Storm? 

Here was I thinking about the whole saga “People will literally invest in anything that is listed on Binance, at least Binance should respect that. But really, greediness is the root of this matter. Why would investors leave a two-year solidified project (Uniswap) for two-week juicy sushi- it is somehow… The guy stated he the dev share was 10% but, according to a tweet I just saw, what has he developed really? A code-copy, or a community formed from another project?… ”

I looked at Coinmarketcap and… Sushi again at $3+, it had gained and jumped back from 1.16$ that it crashed to. What changed? 

Sam Bankman-Fried (@SBF_Alameda), the Founder of FTX had released an update on a first-aid to resuscitate Sushi. Holding a fair share of SUSHI himself, he suggested that Nomi Chef, Sushi founder release keys/ controls to the project. So he can hand it over to the community and the project can operate as it was designed. Nomi a few hours later did just that. 

The project via community voting methods has started in the right direction to build a real project from the ruins. 

A repentant NomiChef or a good guy from the Beginning? 

NomiChef had been responding to tweets and messages all along. He handed over the keys and controls of the project as the community requested. He recently open-sourced the front-end of the Sushiswap website. Many had thought he was related to Bandprotocol but Band Protocol had denied any link to Sushi. These acts had given very few community members a second thought on his personality and intentions about the project. 

What have I learned?

• Due diligence will always be key, patience and greediness are eternal enemies. 
• Top Crypto Exchanges really need to rethink on their listing strategies 
• If you are a leader, when something goes wrong around you, you will surely get the fires. 
• Don’t move with the wave, 98% of the time it burns as hard. 
• Don’t EVER invest what you cannot afford to lose. 
• …

Because all these might even be part of a bigger conspiracy… 😒