I believe we don’t need a new Head Chef. Based on what I’ve experienced, no one could be as good as Maki as the leader of SushiSwap, sadly, in many points so we should stop trying to find his replacement anymore. It won’t work in that way.
Instead, I propose SushiSwap to be decentralized just like the beginning and in this way it could shine again.
Open & Equal Opportunities
When I first got hired by Maki in 2020 Oct, there were only 2 full time devs who had been voluntarily contributing for the protocol and we didn’t even call ourselves core team. It was just an ad hoc title from community for those who contributed most. But apparently these days core team has too strong power in terms of governance, which eventually leads to who will get more resources and there’s always a risk factor of corruption if we need to rely on people.
It shouldn’t be this way. SushiSwap wasn’t born in this philosophy. Uniswap was a closed company but ours was a completely new experiment that broke all the stereotypes about what a revenue generating entity should be. DAOs weren’t real before it was born. I, personally, was so excited and thrilled to be able to join this new chapter of humanity that could change our lives forever.
So, I propose core team build a transparent and autonomous payment system (should be on-chain, for sure) to reduce any possibility of corruption first. Only through this system can the funds in the treasury be transferred after on-chain vote by the community. There won’t be core team anymore so anyone can propose a payment for a contributor with some endorsement. And the payment obviously needs to be vested so that malicious party can take advantage of it without adding value. There’s a committee who monitors the progress of each contributor but the members of the committee changes frequently to prevent corruptions.
I have many ideas on how to build those system that cannot be controlled by any centralized authority so I could help building it if the community wants.
After the system being built, the name “core team” needs to be banned forever. They’ll work for the protocol just like before, but with the same title as other contributors. No one is higher than others so everyone should be treated equally. Who gets paid more will be decided by the community based on their previous contributions and expected result. Not any central party should have power to decide it.
Massive Hiring through 100+ Bounty Campaigns
So far hiring was done through internal network which means they could’ve brought their friends to the team to form an alliance which eventually could become a political force. Also, the current team is relatively small compared to other DeFi protocols like Yearn (with more than 50+ contributors). I believe this is the core problem current SushiSwap faces and one of the reasons why it’s losing its competitiveness. For sure hiring issues need to be addressed but in a decentralized way, and to achieve it we would need a transparent but aggressive hiring strategy to target all good talents who are working in DeFi space.
One of reasons why the initial contributors were interested in SushiSwap was ChefNomi announced that he’ll give away 80k SUSHI to whoever builds a new frontend for it. No other DeFi protocol has ever given away this amount to whoever has ability and can add value to the protocol. This is why SushiSwap got popular and successful but these days everyone seems to have forgotten it.
My idea is to hold dozens of bounties constantly(every month or so) with all the different skillsets that are required for the protocol and generously reward those winners. Only in this way, I believe we could give the same message as ChefNomi delivered to the space in 2020 that we are a legit DAO that’s open to any talent so you can come any time to contribute for us.
Currently $20M worth SUSHI + USDC is sitting on the treasury so if we only use 20% of it, it’ll be more than enough to run 100 different bounties for 1 year with 40k allocated to each campaign. (Obviously the detail can be changed for the best effect)
I expect that in this way we could have more than 100+ new top-tier contributors and it’ll be only a matter of time to become the no.1 AMM protocol in the space. Personally I think it’s a really great deal to spend only 20% of the treasury to fullfill this result.
VE Tokenomics
SushiSwap is losing its TVL continuously from last year. Balancer had less than half of its TVL in 2020 but now it’s 1.5x bigger than us. We spent too much time on who’ll be the new king while watching other competitors catch up and even beat us. This needs to be changed, ASAP.
2021 was a year of VE tokenomics that started with Curve and Convex. And now it’s being expanded to other AMMs. Also, Solidly, Balancer, Aura Finance, Velodrome proved that this new mechanism is good enough for protecting the price from dumping. For those who’re not familiar with VE, I’ll make it quick: If they lock into a ve token, they get a voting power to decide which pool will get higher reward so they’re highly motivated to lock tokens.
What’s really important about this mechanism is that it completely reduces the core team’s authority to decide which pool will have more/less rewards. It’s solely reliant on community vote, and obviously it’ll reduce the possible politics around it.
As far as I know, there’s no concrete movement around VE implementation from the core team. But I can and would be happy to deliver veSUSHI for the community before it’s too late.
Core contracts that’ll be delivered:
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VotingEscrow: veSUSHI to track each locker’s voting power (non transferrable)
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GaugeController: decides which pool will have more emission
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LiquidityGauge: calculates each LP’s reward in proportional to their staking period & amount
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Minter: mints SUSHI for LPs and voters every week
Misc:
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Multi-chain support
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Fee distribution
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(3, 3) game theory (if needed after discussions)
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Frontend for gauge voting
I’ll write a more detailed proposal if the community wants it but basically I just want 200k SUSHI for the full delivery of the product. I’ll ship a pre-audited but complete contracts with frontend in 3 months(1k penalty per day) and if there’s no problem, launch the product right after that.
Conclusion
I’ve been contributing for SushiSwap from day 1 and I’ve experience or witnessed any good and bad events in it. Even though current situation of it doesn’t seem too bright to me because it’s losing its original vision but I am still very much interested in helping my hometown to shine again.
It’s okay that none of my proposals get accepted. But, if community is in need of my help I’ll always be there to add value to the protocol so that it regains its glory just like it was. I truly believe that it’ll come back to where it was but only with the help of all the contributors/community not in a centralized way.
Let’s make SushiSwap decentralized again