The SushiSwap episode is a gift that keeps on giving, and not in a good way. From creator “Chef Nomi” liquidating his SUSHI holdings (Until he realized he f*cked up) to pass control to FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, to the freefall the token soon found itself in (SUSHI fell by over 70% in its immediate aftermath), the project has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Now, it would seem that the project is getting ready to write yet another chapter in its short history.
SushiSwap co-founder 0xMaki yesterday announced his intention to go “full-time with @SushiSwap,” via a proposal submitted by Adam Cochran, Partner at Cinneamhain Ventures. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be a big deal. After all, as the proposal highlights, the project doesn’t have a dedicated, full-time team yet.
However, the aforementioned proposal was met by a lot of skepticism in some quarters, mostly because it involves giving 0xMaki a “one-time founder’s grant” of 500K SUSHI upfront, 500K SUSHI locked over a one-year period, and another 500K vested over two years for continuing development work.
The proposal says, “It is time for him to be rewarded for the work he has done as a founder and have him focus on Sushi full time.” Fair enough. But, is oxMaki’s work for the project worth that kind of upfront payment? That was the major concern doing the rounds of the community, at press time.
In fact, this was a concern aired by one of the nine newly-elected multi-sig members too, with the person tweeting,
“I am all for rewarding the founders and aligning incentives over the long term but the upfront payment of 500k SUSHI (worth nearly $1.5M) is a little too much for two weeks of work. I won’t be publicly supporting this proposal.”
Instead, the multi-sig member presented a counter-proposal which included only 50K SUSHI in upfront payments plus higher rewards and bonuses “over milestones decided by the community.” The present proposal, he concluded, “is not a good idea.”
The member in question was supported by YFI Creator, Andre Cronje too, who tweeted,
Incentives should be aligned/fair though? Earning a casual $1.5m for < 2 weeks worth of work, off of cloning someone else's work, hardly seems aligned.
If that's the case, should I stop building unless people pay me $3m per product?
— Andre Cronje (@AndreCronjeTech) September 12, 2020
Faced with a growing tide of concerns, Genesis Block’s Mick Hagen, FTX’s Bankman-Fried, and Larry Cermak presented an updated proposal that suggested radical changes in Cochran’s initial proposal.
These changes included, 1) No upfront grant, 2) A 3-year vesting schedule that will be unlocked by the community using the Sablier protocol, 3) $10,000 for salary and expenses. Finally, each of these provisions could be terminated by the community if 0xMaki were to stop working full-time or if the work was no longer important or satisfactory.
This revised proposal seemed to have the co-founder’s support as well, with 0xMaki tweeting that the said proposal is open to be voted upon by the community.
Soon after, 0xMaki also released a Medium post titled the “Grand Opening of SushiSwap,” a roadmap of sorts for the community. For the near-term, the post revealed that builders should tackle the following, namely, 1) More UIs and language support, 2) Limit/Stop Loss Orders, 3) Mobile Support, 4) Better LP tools, and 5) Refining UX for harvesting SUSHI.
The blogpost also suggested looking into “new ways to earn SUSHI in conjunction with the current pools being rewarded,” with “Gems” being one of these ways. The roadmap in question also put forward ideas pertaining to changes in governance specs and the treasury, while also stating that partnering with the likes of Aave, Compound, REN Protocol, Hegic, and Opyn could be worth it.
In line with the aforementioned proposals, the author also went on to expand on why founders of the project, including Chef Nomi, should be rewarded for their work.
It should be noted, however, that at the time of writing, the initial proposal was garnering a 74% approval. On the contrary, an opposing proposal which awarded 0xMaki just 250K SUSHI upfront was failing to convince community members with just 19% approving it.
