Election of Jonathan Howard as Head Chef

[Neiltbe]

I didn’t want to get into this and take the attention away from a great candidate but I am happy to address a few items.

@pegbit

you took the responsibility of handling the compensation matters between contributors and investors. Initially, you said that you would not be compensated for your work and that there were no incentives.

I have paid out of pocket and donated my own money to keep Sushi online when it came to making sure vendors got paid post-Frog Nation and made sure they got paid. Vendors were quite literally days away from pulling the plug on the project and it would have gone offline. That is how close we got to catastrophe, and a random community member like myself had to come in to keep things chugging along. I have never discussed this publicly, as it was a crisis averted and there’s no reason to make the team look bad that a random had to come in and keep the lights on, wasn’t their fault, structural issues. But I came in and helped in a major way and continue to. I have no control over the project but this story is a reflection of my desire to see sushi succeed. I have advanced tens of thousands of dollars personally out of pocket to ensure vendors haven’t cut the lights. Think about that for a second, I care enough about Sushi that I advanced $50,000 out of pocket because Sushi was dealing with issues and was at risk of going offline.

@pegbit

After a while, you came up with a massive ask of paying you 1 million dollars for an increase of 1 billion dollars market cap for Sushi for acting as an advisor, but many people in the internal discord rejected it instantly since it made no sense for you work as an advisor just for being the middleman to sort out compensation stuff.

Ya, I offered to only charge for services if Sushi were to appreciate. You are the knucklehead why I am getting paid $70/hr & log my hours when I was going to do it for free & only take payment via vested Sushi upside. Being paid for work is a matter of principle for me.

@pegbit

From what I understand, you have been billing us close to 40 hours a week with the agreed comp rate by checking in with Jiro a few moments ago.

I have no influence over Sushi’s direction but I’ve closed BD deals for Furo & Sushi, where necessary, helped bring in new demand and buy pressure and helped retain legal counsel amongst other things. I could go on but this is not about me. Let’s take a look at what you’ve done: Here is your original Samurai proposal. It’s been 1 year and you’ve been unable to ship a ticketing system for the support organization. Sushi’s All-In-One Customer Support and Engagement. It is gross incompetence that you’ve been unable to ship a ticketing system to this point. And I’ve told you this directly. I encourage all readers to go look at what you have promised in your original Samurai proposal one year later:

1. Create a DeFi 101 coursebook (NO)
2. Create analytics and community reports. (NO)
3. Provide direct support lines for Institutions (NO)

Now lets go over v2 Samurai v2 Proposal from February

1. Create Self-Serve Content and Articles for Sushi and its Partner Ecosystem (NO)
2. Implement Bot and Live Chat (NO)
3. Implement a Seamless Ticketing Experience (NO)
4. Create analytics and community reports. (NO, unless that is this: a very sad excuse for community reports. https://toshokan.samurais.io/)
5. Create fun & engaging tools & events centered around brand awareness. (NO)
6. Assist in managing elevant social media channels on behalf of Sushi (YES).

This track record is poor and I understand you are unhappy with me because I’ve told you directly that you coast & need to pick up your game. I also declined a 200k+ per year compensation package that you asked for LESS THAN 2 MONTHS AFTER YOU WERE GIVEN A SALARY VIA THE PASSING OF V2 before everyone else on the team was paid you were granted financial security, and you had the audacity to ask for a 200K comp package less than 60 days from v2 vote. What could have changed in 60 days that you were deserving of 90,000/year more?

This is a document you authored & tried to get me to agree to. LOL, I said HELL NO, and since then there’s been an animosity toward me. But that’s ok, because I am not getting guilt tripped into “being a bro”.

Finally, I am specifically talking about you. There are great Samurai on the team and i know they will not criticize you due to the Samurai stick together stuff, but I am happy to. Your output has been negligible, unfortunately for the community you received a 1year grant via 2.0.

Meanwhile, you’re responsible for setting up a Discord bot that took > 5 weeks & blog a couple times per week on https://www.samurais.io/. I was a co-author of Samurai v2 & I am looking forward to sharing halfly performance reviews with the community.

@pegbit

I remember this part explicitly because, when we were all drafting the Sushi 2.0 proposal, you added the positions of Compensation Committee member, Advisor, and even Community Oversight roles for you, which came in surprising for me at that moment because there was a conflict of interests and this wasn’t agreed upon before. When I bought it up to his notice, Jiro also removed that part from the final proposal.

Correct, I didn’t care what the title was whether it was community oversight, comp committee, or advisory which was the term the team used. I signed off on the edited/removed version, this is a whole lot of nothing with a picture of nothing lol.

[jhoward]

I can help clear up some of these points

Venture backed pre-ipo

I don’t see the comparison here, to be honest. Crypto isn’t the Nasdaq, doesn’t share the same risk profile or compensation standards, etc. Can’t speak for the others, but I did lean on my lawyer for comparisons (they’ve seen much higher) and a couple close friends in defi as well.

We would suggest (1) more transparency about the goals used to determine this bonus

Absolutely. I would too, and that would be the plan. This was probably not sufficiently explicit in the original post. As proposed, this would have to be unanimous by the compensation committee (ie. my vote doesn’t matter) and should absolutely be transparent as they’re set. DeFi moves quickly, and I’m not sure a DAO vote on every minor milestone would be productive/optimal for achieving the DAO’s goals, though obviously that’s their decision. I do think the comp committee will have crucial context internally as well as the ability to move quickly, in order to set these appropriately. For what it’s worth, I don’t see any way this becomes a guaranteed bonus, and given that a number of comments have brought up shipping speed, I anticipate it being something I’ll have to work for.

One key question to evaluate this offer is whether this grant is one-time or reoccurring (e.g., made every year)?

I read this as clear, but if you missed this, then it seems that it wasn’t. This is one-time. If any future grants were to be contemplated in the future, that would be up to the DAO

However, if the candidate is not expected to get a refresher grant during the next four years, then the annualized value is $600K, which is more palatable.

That’s exactly right. I would quibble with the idea that it’s possible to annualize a value from price targets, but I believe I understand what you’re getting at

Finally, what is the measurement period for this grant? Can the targets be achieved at anytime, over a year, over four years?

This is in the original proposal as well. I don’t want to replicate the whole thing here, but I’d encourage a reread on this one. In short: A single month’s worth is unlocked if the 30-day time-weighted average rises above a certain price that month. It doesn’t contemplate an expiry, but if the DAO were to approve them, the DAO could presumably remove or change them.

[mountain_goat]

Jon would be you kind enough to ask your non sushi related supporters to leave the sushi community to do our governance process without interference. Let’s not lose sight of this being about sushi.

This is a temperature check designed to measure sushi community’s feelings on you being proposed as a candidate. It’s a legitimate part of our system.

It’s alarming that it’s continued since this was posted and you have seemed comfortable for it to continue, this is similar to Sifu tactics and we are jaded from being flooded with outside opinions telling us about the latest messiah in the past.

The stats from forum yesterday may even be tge worst ever attempted manipulation of forum by a cohort.

Would appreciate your intervention

[azurecm]

I am 100% against this proposal. Jonathan Howard is not qualified as Head Chef of sushi from every aspect. he doesn’t even have defi experience. Best way is to make public the compensation package. I believe there will be more candidates interested. then we could vote for one of them.

[azurecm]

also Jonathan please stop bringing your non sushi related supporters here to vote for you. this forum is for sushi community. please non sushi related supporters leave the sushi community !

[pegbit]

Yo it seems like you’re trying to change the focus and gaslight me. But that’s okay! I’m happy to do my rebuttal!

To see the real story, we need to go back to the time of the Frog Nation takeover proposal. The Samurais fought tooth and nail to keep the community from crossing into Frog Nation, because it looked like they were taking over. The poor community had to face suppression, censorship, and much more. We decided to quit unanimously at the end of January after almost ten months of service, mainly because our goals weren’t aligned with the new merger. The grant was still running for a few more weeks iirc. Another factor contributing to our decision to step down was that Dani wanted to bring on his crew. This was also close to the time our original v1 grant was expiring. We still made our presence within the community.

After the Sifu thing came out, we realized that there was a lot of chaos going on, and we stepped back to deal with the mess. During then, Boring took the initiative to see who all worked for Sushi and planned a future for Sushi, which later led to Sushi 2.0. You hit me up on a DM saying that you hold a decent stack of sushi and want to see Samurais reinstated ASAP. Well, this was the intro DM you sent me:

“Yoo! I just want to let you know samurai are sushi’s competitive advantage and imo we will design samurai2.0 to be best in class, but also the processes so that community is able to see just how great you guys are.”

Three community members, including @mountain_goat, @Graine and yourself, stepped up to craft the proposal along with the Samurais. The timeline of this was similar to when Sushi 2.0 discussions started and Boring made it clear that we should be part of the core team. We were told to post this proposal because something like a Frog Nation takeover shouldn’t affect us just for speaking out the truth and standing up for the values we believe are suitable for Sushi.

Just to add, I asked for 0% hike on my remuneration on the v2 proposal from what I was getting in the v1 proposal, while every other Samurai got at least a 30% hike. There were a few personal reasons why I did this because we did miss out on a few scope items, especially since we were fighting off the chaos. The v2 proposal passed with significant backing too.

After this, you slowly changed from being a community rep to handling the investor relations for Sushi and making yourself a comp committee member/ advisor etc etc. There were a lot of discussions about remuneration in Sushi 2.0 proposal. The team’s incentive system was revamped to provide more vested tokens and performance-based rewards to ensure that team members keep an eye on their work and are more motivated to deliver results. Samurais are probably one of the very few teams that have not got a signing bonus or any other kind of bonus working for Sushi. We do a lot more work apart from acting as community champions since we take on extra roles with Q/A testing, product-related stuff, marketing, etc. With Sushi 2.0, we felt that if there was going to be a total overhaul of structure, we wanted to be part of it too. As a part of Sushi 2.0 revamp, you wanted us to discuss our goals and what other roles we can take on. Everyone was encouraged to hop on a call with you so that you can take that to the investors and work it out. The screenshot you shared was a private document shared to you after a call with you to expand the roles into more product-related aspects. It’s pretty shitty about you to share a private document within the team, but I’m not going to get into that.

Here is the original ask for the whole team for Sushi 2.0 inclusion:

The vested tokens above are for four years

We’ve had a great experience here at Sushi, but as our skills and knowledge have grown, we’ve realized that there’s an opportunity to transition into more product/project-centric roles.

Here is also a quick comparison chart of what we make/made etc.

Anyway, this didn’t work out. We were also discarded from the signing bonus this time. Here is a comment from RSK on the Sushi 2.0 proposal.

Sushi 2.0: A Restructure For The Road Ahead

For the transparency that community and investor deserve: Samurai team is getting paid (like mentioned on the proposal) as per Samurai V2 mandate. Additional Benefit we are getting is one year salary worth of Sushi (Valued at $3) vested over 4 years period with 1 year cliff and performance based bonus depending on deliverables. We are not getting any signing (or resigning) bonus or sushi vested over 2 years.

–

@Neiltbe

I have paid out of pocket and donated my own money to keep Sushi online when it came to making sure vendors got paid post-Frog Nation and made sure they got paid. Vendors were quite literally days away from pulling the plug on the project and it would have gone offline. That is how close we got to catastrophe, and a random community member like myself had to come in to keep things chugging along. I have never discussed this publicly, as it was a crisis averted and there’s no reason to make the team look bad that a random had to come in and keep the lights on, wasn’t their fault, structural issues. But I came in and helped in a major way and continue to. I have no control over the project but this story is a reflection of my desire to see sushi succeed. I have advanced tens of thousands of dollars personally out of pocket to ensure vendors haven’t cut the lights. Think about that for a second, I care enough about Sushi that I advanced $50,000 out of pocket because Sushi was dealing with issues and was at risk of going offline.

So?? Enough of a reason for Sushi to pay you what you decide is the right amount? Geiorgy from Frog Nation used to pay our vendors before, I’m not sure what the deal is but I’m guessing we paid a small premium on top for the service.

@Neiltbe

You are the knucklehead why I am getting paid $70/hr & log my hours when I was going to do it for free & only take payment via vested Sushi upside. Being paid for work is a matter of principle for me.

Honestly, if I’m the reason you’re paid $70/h instead of being paid a million dollar per billion dollar mcap increase, I think I’ll still sleep peacefully at night!

Now let’s talk about the Samurai v2 proposal:

@Neiltbe

• Create Self-Serve Content and Articles for Sushi and its Partner Ecosystem (NO)
• Implement Bot and Live Chat (NO)
• Implement a Seamless Ticketing Experience (NO)

We just had a discussion on all hands this week and the week before that we are doing testing around the knowledge base and the next step is to add on the live chat followed by ticketing (which doesn’t really take any time once KB is deployed). Did you not listen to me when I spoke about it this morning during all hands? I’m not sure if you didn’t hear me or you just forgot. Same with webinars!

We will announce the launch of Knowledgebase in the next two weeks on https://toshokan.samurais.io, where we normally give all the latest updates about the ecosystem for the community.

Since we are here, I can give the community a live update on what we are working on:

• Sushi main server fully managed with two revisions and security checks - DONE
• Toshokan Blog - Status: LIVE AND ACTIVE
• Overhaul current support docs with Wasabi - Status - UPTO DATE
• Sushi Webinars - Status: READY but paused for launch because overall engagement is severely low, waiting for the market upturn to launch. @Zapacheenie adding the final stitches
• Self-service knowledgebase - Status: Undergoing testing. Ready to go LIVE really soon.
• Chat and ticketing - Status: Chat already plugged in, ticketing needs to get Samurais onboarded to it after KB is pushed live
• Build community engagement tools - Status: Production ongoing
• Sushi Academy - Status: Transitioned to co with Marketing and Design
• Samurai NFTs- Status: NFT’s ready, just waiting for the market upturn to launch for maximum engagement
• Samurai Merch- Status: Designs ready
• Sushi Data Room -Status: *WIP with @CryptoLamer *
• Sushi Times v2 - Status: Low Priority for now
• Test Sessions- Status - Dropped, not enough interest

–

@Neiltbe

Correct, I didn’t care what the title was whether it was community oversight, comp committee, or advisory which was the term the team used. I signed off on the edited/removed version, this is a whole lot of nothing with a picture of nothing lol.

Oh hell yeah! It’s all the same roles. You signed off? You tried to sneak that through the final proposal, and when we noticed, we took it out?

~

It’s pretty impressive how you spin the narrative to get what you want!

[0xLucky]

I’ve never worked with Jonathan, but his bio as a former founder/exec is what Sushi needs. While it doesn’t need to be Jonathan, I believe Sushi is a lot more suited to hire a CEO with experience operating/managing teams and running businesses. Whether you like it or not, the Sushi team exists to serve the token holders, and Sushi is a complex enough project that you need someone with founder/management experience.

I don’t understand the obsession with bringing on someone that’s “crypto native”. Most people in the community likely only got started with crypto in the 2021 bull market, or at best late 2017/early 2018. It’s not like you can hire a partner with 25 years of experience from a “McKinsey of crypto”.

The best path forward for the community is to bring on someone who clearly understands DeFi but also knows how to run a company for the long term (see all the “crypto-native” protocol founders who left <12 months after launching.) Whether that’s Jonathan or another candidate, the community should realize that it needs very competent management to compete with the likes of well-run companies like Uniswap. It can’t just be a free-for-all where there’s no incentive to ship product on time.

[Neiltbe]

This is my last post specifically addressing this topic as this is getting far removed from Jon’s candidacy.

@pegbit

Here is also a quick comparison chart of what we make/made etc.

This is a picture of you showing not only did you already make the most money within the Samurai org, you then had the largest jump in base salary. Of course it wasn’t agreed to, this was less than 60 days after your last deal. The funny part about this was I told you if you wanted it, go direct to the community and make a forum post. Of course that didn’t happen if you genuinely believed it to be worth it you would’ve gone ahead and done a Samurai v2.01, it was taking advantage of the situation.
You wanted to start posting the screenshots, here lets have it:

@pegbit

Since we are here, I can give the community a live update on what we are working on:

• Sushi main server fully managed with two revisions and security checks - DONE
• Toshokan Blog - Status: LIVE AND ACTIVE
• Overhaul current support docs with Wasabi - Status - UPTO DATE
• Sushi Webinars - Status: READY but paused for launch because overall engagement is severely low, waiting for the market upturn to launch. @Zapacheenie adding the final stitches
• Self-service knowledgebase - Status: Undergoing testing. Ready to go LIVE really soon.
• Chat and ticketing - Status: Chat already plugged in, ticketing needs to get Samurais onboarded to it after KB is pushed live
• Build community engagement tools - Status: Production ongoing
• Sushi Academy - Status: Transitioned to co with Marketing and Design
• Samurai NFTs- Status: NFT’s ready, just waiting for the market upturn to launch for maximum engagement
• Samurai Merch- Status: Designs ready
• Sushi Data Room -Status: *WIP with @CryptoLamer *
• Sushi Times v2 - Status: Low Priority for now
• Test Sessions- Status - Dropped, not enough interest

It’s good to see an update. I am sure the community will be very enthusiastic that it took 5 months & $240K for Discord server checks, a blog, merch designs, & Samurai NFT’s.

It is my opinion that you and specifically you enjoy being left unchecked & as such see this as an opportunity to throw mud at a very sensible candidate knowing if you blow a bit of smoke, do some rah rah, odds are Sushi continues leaderless & you’re able to continue spending time on things like making Samurai NFT’s, & Samurai merch designs & remain unchecked. With no Head Chef, Sushi community gets money spent, investment, in blogging…but wait the traffic is for some reason going to a https://www.samurais.io/ instead of Sushi.com what am I missing?

Per leadership process: When I asked the team to give me specific folks to reach out to not even contact info, just names and I would do the chasing and do outbound, not a single lead or candidate sent my way from you. Now all of a sudden, a competent head chef is sourced and there’s questions of the process?

Anyway, this is my last point about this. I’ve stated my opinion on the matter as you have yours. You’re welcome to get the last word in but discussion should be back to the Chef candidate & the deal.

[pegbit]

@Neiltbe

It’s good to see an update. I am sure the community will be very enthusiastic that it took 5 months & $240K for Discord server checks, a blog, merch designs, & Samurai NFT’s.

Including 24-hour round support, community management, product help, governance process, and internal proposal management for 5 folks full time. Again missing out purposefully on the products that are being tested None of us are charging 40h per week working at several places though fyi

@Neiltbe

It is my opinion that you and specifically you enjoy being left unchecked & as such see this as an opportunity to throw mud at a very sensible candidate knowing if you blow a bit of smoke, do some rah rah, odds are Sushi continues leaderless & you’re able to continue spending time on things like making Samurai NFT’s, & Samurai merch designs.

The majority of us have been vocal about having the right leader. We all love what Maki has done for Sushi. If you read my OP you’ll see what really is the problem.

@Neiltbe

With no Head Chef, Sushi community gets money spent, investment, in blogging…but wait the traffic is for some reason going to a https://www.samurais.io/ instead of Sushi.com what am I missing?

Why do you keep editing lol? This is a decentralized project. Separate UI’s is not an issue lol. Personally, I feel the community identifies Samurais with other community champions because there is a brand value here.

[mountain_goat]

Neil you play hard and fast with the facts and are trying to do a cuttlefish manoeuvre on Pegbit because he’s not acting like a nodding dog yes man.

Your narrative only ever portrays you as a god like figure.

I believe you made two appointments this week and even promoted a samurai as one of ‘your appointments’ so you must not think too poorly of how they perform.

The samurai have proven themselves invaluable and you were their biggest fan. Most long-standing sushi community members are in no doubt about that. Although the de ja vu makes it hard to tell which round of takeover it is at this stage. Is it a frog, is it a vc……

[CryptoLamer]

You are absolutely right, Nick. And the truth is that the compensation package for a future Head Chef should have been discussed on the forum before even starting accept applications. At least some general limits should have gone through a temperature check. Thus compensate committee would know what they can negotiate for and there would not be surprises for the community and dramas like the current ones.

[CryptoLamer]

@Neiltbe

• Create Self-Serve Content and Articles for Sushi and its Partner Ecosystem (NO)
• Implement Bot and Live Chat (NO)
• Implement a Seamless Ticketing Experience (NO)
• Create analytics and community reports. (NO, unless that is this: a very sad excuse for community reports. https://toshokan.samurais.io/ )
• Create fun & engaging tools & events centered around brand awareness. (NO)
• Assist in managing elevant social media channels on behalf of Sushi (YES).

If you really think that Samurais (or any other team members) are not doing their job (according to you) why did not bring this up in front of the community?!? Is this not your duty as a member of the compensate committee elected by the community?

@Neiltbe

I didn’t want to get into this and take the attention away from a great candidate but I am happy to address a few items.

So you are saying that you were willing to close your eyes about team members not doing their job (according to you) and you brought this up only because of the critics you received?

@Neiltbe

I have paid out of pocket and donated my own money to keep Sushi online when it came to making sure vendors got paid post-Frog Nation and made sure they got paid. Vendors were quite literally days away from pulling the plug on the project and it would have gone offline. That is how close we got to catastrophe, and a random community member like myself had to come in to keep things chugging along. I have never discussed this publicly, as it was a crisis averted and there’s no reason to make the team look bad that a random had to come in and keep the lights on, wasn’t their fault, structural issues. But I came in and helped in a major way and continue to. I have no control over the project but this story is a reflection of my desire to see sushi succeed. I have advanced tens of thousands of dollars personally out of pocket to ensure vendors haven’t cut the lights. Think about that for a second, I care enough about Sushi that I advanced $50,000 out of pocket because Sushi was dealing with issues and was at risk of going offline.

Let assume that you are right (though you are not, as at any time there were enough funds in Sushiswap Treasury to cover these expenses. If the problem was made known I am sure there could be and other solutions). My questions is: Why are you still paying for these services (and after that reimbursed from the Ops wallet) many months after Frog nation drama? Are we still in risk of going “offline”? There are some solutions which allow DAOs to pay for their real world expenses without having bank account. One of the projects offering such solutions even reached out to Sushiswap?
Couple of times I point to you that simple announcements to keep community informed what is going on and what is suppose to be done will save us a lot of problems. So many forum members sharing that they feel most of what is going on in Sushi is behind the curtain (and that they do not have info to make decision on a vote) proves that I am right.
It is obviously that you want this protocol to be run purely as corporation. You do not want to explain your motifs and actions in front of the people, as you think that is the right way towards success. Fine - maybe this will make sushiswap 10 x Uniswap and Balancer combined together - but in that case please put a proposal on Snapshot and let it done once and for all.
P.S. No matter what, Sushiswap can go offline only if all the chains it is deployed on go offline. Token may go to 0, Team may quit, UI may be gone, but the protocol will be there and most of its functions will be completely operational… Chef Nomi managed to bring it to life without using a single paid service (afaik).

[pocketsquare]

350,000 SUSHI is solely at the discretion if the compensation committee, of which Jon will be 1 of the 3 members and Neil (his friend) is the other.

Also, whats the point of the 350k SUSHI layered on top of the price-triggered incentive compensation? This is redundant. If products are being shipped and the platform revenues are increasing, then the price compenstion will be triggered. There is no need for the 350k SUSHI “discretionary” bonus on top of that. Do away with that part

Also not sure why we are using price triggered rather than platform revenue triggered or some relative outperformance vs a DEFI Index like the the Coindesk Defi Select Index (CoinDesk DeFi Select Index (DFX)). Basically if this guy bides his time over the next couple years and doesnt get fired he will get paid in the next bull cycle regardless.

[OneKissPre]

After reading through recent discussions - this is exactly what im talking about

Nope, all comp committee work that I do is volunteer work done for free for Sushi.

From what I understand, you have been billing us close to 40 hours a week with the agreed comp rate by checking in with Jiro a few moments ago.

Did you write this proposal @Neiltbe? It reads likes intentionally obfuscated word salad like your replies. “All comp committee work I do is volunteer”…buttt I’m paid for other things by individuals who stand the benefit from this proposal and sneaked in a clause to lower performance targets.

Team members’ current price-based bonuses from the bull market are so high they don’t carry much weight in motivating. They’ll be lowered to these same price tiers and ratios to adjust for bear market downturn.

Let me get this straight then. Leadership search committee comprised on Matthew, Jiro, Arca(?), and yourself. Matthew, Jiro, and you stand or currently benefit from non-DAO salary/hourly payouts and stand to gain even more from lowering performance bonuses to allow for a $3 trigger (10 day movement) down from $12. You personally knew and introduced Jonathan Howard?

How much more backdoor does this need to get?

The very fact you haven’t touched on this incredible clause just completely diminishes your credibility, despite your paragraphs.

[dranon911]

Can we discuss how this guy made a couple celebrity nft projects and is pretending like that experience translates at all into running what is highly technical defi project.

I understand it may not be out of the ordinary for a genuinely qualified candidate to get a package like in this proposal. But you are not that candidate. You simply do not have the track record to demand salaries this high. Being able to network with celebrities is not similar to running a defi protocol. And no, a cryptic tweet where he says he found a 7 figure vulnerability does not prove anything.

Sushi is getting rinsed by the people in the charge. If this proposal goes through I will consider this the final nail in sushi’s coffin because it gives up any ability to pivot away from this plan without completely rinsing the protocol’s funds, getting all the higher ups rich in the process regardless of which way the token goes. Shame on everyone involved in this proposal.

[maka]

I know you are aware of this, as you were involved in the 2.0 proposal and I discussed such an exact point with you.
That our roles and responsibilities over that period had severely shifted as a result of the work that needed to be done in the moment. That it could be used to criticise, but that any one with context could back Sams value.
Am sure you can find someone to disagree, but on the main that has rung true.

We continue to maintain 24 hr support, have rescued funds exceeding our wages, and as you say have a mandate to fulfill yet still take on endless unagreed upon extras.
(That may have to stop now, if one wishes to measure of our performance on such petty terms.)

Sams are still cited as one of the few arms of Sushi to have retained integrity throughout last years clown show, and I would think twice before feeling any one an easy target.

This thread definitely should not be focused on personal attacks, by either one of you.
So let’s focus on the topic at hand.

I have zero interest in public mud slinging, but I do have absolute faith in Sushi, and those price targets are a joke.
Market doesn’t make it that easy even on a short seller, we could go to zero and still hit $3 or $5 before reversal. 200 day isn’t a target it’s an exit.

1 love

[C3_Group]

Thanks for your response @jhoward

@jhoward

I don’t see the comparison here, to be honest. Crypto isn’t the Nasdaq, doesn’t share the same risk profile or compensation standards, etc. Can’t speak for the others, but I did lean on my lawyer for comparisons (they’ve seen much higher) and a couple close friends in defi as well.

I have spent 6+ years looking at compensation figures for traditional orgs and the last couple of years gathering data on web3 compensation. I have yet to see such a figure for an organization of Sushi’s size and scope. I would love to have folks that determined this offer (Comp Committee) to share the rationale or benchmark source, as you would otherwise be encouraged to do so if you were a publicly-traded organization (this is good governance, not bike shedding).

Thank you for confirming that the grants are not reoccurring. Your proposed total compensation is about $800K salary + $175K annualized sign on bonus + $300K annualized time-vested sushi + $325K est. annualized price-vested Sushi** = ~$1.6M annualized per year

*** I understand that there is no inherent value to you until the price reaches a certain point. However, from a comp perspective, we need to value this grant today (just like you would with a stock option). For simplicity, I assumed that the $7 goal is target (650K Sushi) and anything earned above that is stretch. I valued the 650K sushi at $2 (annualized over 4) and excluded the stretch grant.*

We have not done the detailed benchmarking support work, but just by eye-balling the total annualized comp figure, the magnitude does not raise any red flags.

We do think however that the design of compensation should be tweaked. For example, half of annualized total pay is in cash/stables via the salary. That is a lot for a CEO and we would question whether you are aligned with tokenholders. We would consider taking a portion of the salary and adding it to the guaranteed token grant.

Let’s also take a step back to determine what the purpose of these token grants are trying to accomplish. In our eyes, it is (1) attraction via upside potential, (2) long-term retention, and (3) motivation. Granting at these prices accomplishes (1), so lets set that aside. In terms of retention, monthly vesting on the guaranteed grant does not satisfy long-term retention. The reason why monthly vesting is prevalent in web3 and for tech companies, is because more tokens/equity are used in lieu of cash, which is used to fuel growth. The proposed cash is already high, so monthly vesting is unnecessary and the community should encourage longer-term vesting to ensure alignment with the overall strategy going forward.

In terms of motivation, you are being brought in to turn Sushi around. I personally don’t believe a $11 price over a four year period is a stretch target. This can be achieved in one-two years if bull market conditions are present. There is also no vesting period once they are earned so it ironically creates retention and motivation risk once they are achieved. Also, what if market conditions get worse? Are we going to just continually revise targets?

I would be comfortable with this grant if you attached time-based vesting provisions to it. For example, you have to achieve the hurdle AND time-based service conditions. I would also be comfortable with the current approach if you increase price hurdles to something more stretch over a four year period. Finally, we can focus on other goals (like TVL), rather than price hurdles. That way you won’t get credit for riding the correlation wave caused by the impending (and hopefully successful) merge.

[Graine]

Such a lovely CV, and yet the impact is projected not to exceed 11$ per sushi, starting at 3$?! Only one must be true, then.

“Sushi should be lucky to have such candidate to even consider”… oh wow. Nice wording. Says a lot.

So Howard is a consensus candidate within current clique. Which means he won’t do anything that go against what the clique has been already doing. So why do we even need him? To spend the treasury faster?

That severance package is obscene. It will be the biggest motivator to get fired early. I’m sure the chummy comp committee will find a way to do so, without triggering void close.

We as a community of misfortunate minority bagholders should take away proposed bonus strikes as a direct indication of exit strategy - there’s no point to value a token above what the rulers themselves value it. Sorry if you got to buy above $11.

Time to drop the ‘community’ centric charade. Temp checks get overrun with new users, governance is overrurn with VC bags. Just make a vote to get direct discretionary powers and be done with it. It’s not like anyone has a wherewithal to oppose you.

What a sad day.

[jhoward]

This is a ridiculous attempt at spinning a narrative. We all know there are vastly more people in the Sushi community than there are forum users, and the announcement made news which brought people in. New accounts seem to be going both ways, but I’d say the fresh blood is a good thing. If you’re trying to delegitimize anyone who knows me, offers their experience with me, or is excited by my nomination is fake by definition, then I don’t know what to tell you.

Edit: it should go without saying, but yes: if you’re trolling, if you don’t know my work, if you don’t have an authentic interest in seeing Sushi succeed, whatever it may be, please don’t vote. I don’t need or want that

[mountain_goat]

I’m sorry you see it that way. It’s exactly how dani and Sifu played it here.

Do you really believe that when an important temperature check like this goes up, brand new users (such as ceo candidates frens) should be allowed flood in to vote?

It’s a governance attack issue and has always been strongly frowned on here. You can look up numerous old posts about it.

The good news is that the zero trust users can be and normally are removed.