In Brief:
- Joseph Delong’s exit came amid rising tensions inside the SushiSwap team.
- Delong presented a governance proposal asking to compensate core team members with 200,000 SUSH, except him.
- Over the last month, SushiSwap lost over half of its value due to infighting.
Joseph Delong, CTO of leading decentralized exchange SushiSwap, announced via his official Twitter handle that he is resigning from his position amidst team infighting reports.
Delong’s exit came amid rising tensions inside the SushiSwap team, as well as a lot of fighting among the Sushi community’s higher ranks.
Last year SushiSwap’s pseudonymous founder Chef Nomi swapped some of the SUSHI tokens allotted to the project’s development team into ETH last year, sparking outrage.
Although most of the tokens were quickly returned to the project’s treasury fund, administrative reforms were already in the works at the time.
0xMaki became the core developer of SushiSwap’s architecture once Chef Nomi was ousted. 0xMaki too resigned shortly after.
0xMaki’s post at the time of his leaving implied that he was the main force behind the decision, although team members claim that this was not the case.
Delong appeared to be asking the SUSHI telegram group whether the project should ask Maki to leave, according to a leaked screenshot.
Delong called the claims “absurd defamation” at the time while also acknowledging that he was having problems with some of his teammates.
Last week, Delong threatened to resign if the SUSHI community did not welcome and accept the core development team.
He stated, “If you do not give us the autonomy to continue operations, the capability to form leadership, and increase compensation across the board I will leave.”
Delong also presented a governance proposal in which he proposed compensating all core team members, excluding himself, with 200,000 SUSHI from the project’s treasury for their contributions to the development environment.
Members of the community objected to the project, saying it is unnecessary.
In terms of damage control, SushiSwap’s staff quickly issued a statement recognizing that the difficulties posed by the company’s decentralized structure had resulted in management mistakes.
Delong proposed in his departure statement that the project install a C-Suit from outside the DAO.
This would allow for better team management, while the executive cautioned the community to be “wary of any self-proclaimed leaders arising from the current core team.”
Shortly after the announcement, the price of its native token soared. SUSHI is trading at $6.27 on CoinGecko, after soaring to $6.82 just a few hours ago from an intraday low of $5.69.
Over the last month, the protocol has lost over half of its value due to infighting, but suggestions to reconfigure the DAO could be the protocol’s redeeming factor.
Delong added, “I wish Sushi the best and am saddened that Sushi is so imperiled within and without. The chaos that is occurring now is unlikely to result in a resolution that will leave the DAO as much more of a shadow than it once was without a radical structural transformation.”
