0xMaki, a SushiSwap co-founder and project leader, has stepped aside from his position as the de facto leader of the decentralised finance initiative.
Sushi’s co-founder opened up about the toll that running the exchange had put on his personal life in an honest blog post published on Medium.
As stated in a tweet and a forum post, the pseudonymous developer stated that he has “always strived for Sushi to be leaderless” and that he believes in “decentralisation to the greatest extent possible.”
I will always be there for @SushiSwap but going forward I’ll be in a different role.https://t.co/ybD9Jyg6HN
— 0xMaki 源 義経 🦇🔊 (@0xMaki) September 18, 2021Chef Nomi, the project’s pseudonymous founder, absconded with $14 million in treasury funds, prompting 0xMaki to step in as unofficial project leader the next year. Nomi promptly refunded the money, however after Nomi was banished from the protocol, 0xMaki took over as the protocol’s leader.
The exchange blew up under the control of 0xMaki. According to DeFi Pulse, it is the seventh largest DEX in the world today, with approximately $4.49 billion in crypto assets locked up in liquidity pools. Sushi has subsequently expanded its product offering to include lending and staking products, as well as other financial services.
0xMaki, on the other hand, said that carrying out the programme had taken a toll on his health. In his letter, he stated that he prioritised Sushi over his physical and emotional health, his relationships, his family, and his friends.
In spite of his departure as project leader, 0xMaki will continue to provide advice to the DeFi protocol, which is primarily used as a decentralised exchange, yield farm, and liquidity miner (among other things).
Additionally, 0xMaki expressed his desire to “assist without affiliation the broader DeFi ecosystem regardless of where [it is] deployed” and that he “still believes[s] strongly in the Ethereum community, especially with Layer 2 coming online” as well as other “primitive and experimental” projects.
Layer 2 scaling solutions are ideas to alleviate Ethereum’s infamous transaction bottleneck through the use of technology such as sidechains—blockchains that sit above and periodically interact with the main blockchain, or Layer 1—as well as other techniques.
As the dust settles on Sushi, 0xMaki is considering authoring a book about his experiences working at the protocol—“Who would not want a Sushi/Defi-based “The Social Network”?” he asks.
He stated that he plans to “probably fractionalize my [Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT] for fun and airdrop it to everyone in this community.” —
On Tuesday, DeFi enthusiasts noticed that 0xMaki had been removed from SushiSwap’s multi-signature wallet, indicating that a change might be on the horizon. Before a transaction can be completed in a multisig wallet, it must first receive several signatures from different parties.
In his goodbye post, 0xMaki made no mention of the $3 million hack on MISO, a token sale platform hosted on Sushi, that occurred the day before. A hacker was able to steal 864.8 ETH by taking advantage of an auction for Jay Pegs Auto Mart. The funds were refunded to the account within hours of the hack.
All funds returned 🙌
— Joseph 🤝 Delong 🔱 (@josephdelong) September 17, 2021Despite the fact that it was a horrible day for SushiSwap, the exchange’s SUSHI token only saw a 1.69 percent loss in price overnight, dropping to $13.01.
