“To everyone. I f*cked up. And I am sorry.”
These are the words of “Chef Nomi,” the creator of the SushiSwap project, after suddenly liquidating his stock, causing a massive price crash of over 70% to the SushiSwap token.
SushiSwap is a Decentralized Finance (DeFi) project created by Chef Nomi based on a UniSwap decentralized exchange (DEX) fork for bootstrapping liquidity.
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When Chef Nomi liquidated funds from the development wallet last week — cashing in roughly $14 million in ETH in the process by swapping out SushiSwap tokens (SUSHI) — the community and investors in the project immediately felt the impact.
At its peak, SushiSwap was worth $10.76. At the time of writing, the token is now valued at $2.32. As reported by Coin Desk, once Chef Nomi liquidated their holdings, prices plummeted from $4.44 to $1.20.
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The community response was immediate, with accusations of an exit scam battering the young project’s reputation. Chef Nomi took to Twitter to defend their actions, insisting that the move was comparable to the creator of Litecoin cashing out funds. However, as users pointed out, the SushiSwap project was only several weeks old.
It was not long before the backlash caused a U-turn by the anonymous creator, who transferred ownership to FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and then decided to return the funds cashed out from the developer wallet.
“I have returned all the $14M worth of ETH back to the treasury,” Chef Nomi said in a tweet dated September 11. “And I will let the community decide how much I deserve as the original creator of SushiSwap. In any currency (ETH/SUSHI/etc). With any lockup schedule you wish.”
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Seemingly apologetic, the developer said “I f*cked up. And I am sorry,” adding:
“I hope that SushiSwap continues to evolve. Don’t let my mistake deter it from being a 100% community-run AMM. The success of SushiSwap will set a precedent for many more community-run projects.”
The project creator said that they will continue to “participate in the discussion and technical implementation of SushiSwap” as a background figure, but whether or not the community will forgive, forget, and accept their future contributions remains to be seen.
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