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Exclusive Interview | SushiSwap Core Member Omakase: More than just an AMM, but a DeFi Ecosystem

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Exclusive Interview | SushiSwap Core Member Omakase: More than just an AMM, but a DeFi Ecosystem

Through an exclusive interview, Omakase, a core member of SushiSwap, shared insights on team dynamics, decentralized governance, product planning, and DeFi regulation:

What are the main tasks of Omakase and how does the team operate?

The organization is fluid, that's how Sushi operates.

Omakase: On the first day Sushi's smart contract code was released on GitHub, I joined Sushi. I contacted Chef Nomi and mentioned my experience with YAM and UNI interfaces, offering to assist with interface and infrastructure development. Since then, I have been involved in various aspects such as front-end, operations, contract development, operations, and business expansion. Anything within the Sushi community, you can basically ask me.

The core team and the community are very closely knit. The only difference is probably the ongoing dedication and willingness to spend time. Becoming part of the core team is not easy; we have some developers who build very specific features and then become community members. The organization is fluid, which may seem chaotic to most, but that's how Sushi operates.

What is the team's view on the VC financing proposal dispute?

Phantom Trope truly showcases the power of the Sushi community and governance.

Omakase: Every idea is imperfect when first proposed. It's only through public review and iteration that it becomes refined: that's the power of the community. Establishing and openly discussing among 50,000 community members is not easy, but it's necessary. Establishing a vision and determining direction among community members is also not easy, but these efforts make the project stronger.

People often comment on the speed at which Sushi develops features, which illustrates the power of our community. Sushi is at a critical turning point. We have built many financial prototypes and features, and can now be considered an ecosystem. We are no longer just an AMM. For such a multifunctional product, it's time to form and solidify a comprehensive vision. With the introduction of Layer2, Sushi's user experience will be on par with centralized exchanges. This is a mission confirmed by the community. We have a vast community base, and the community provides us with many product demands and feedback, which we naturally incorporate into our planning.

Perhaps many have forgotten, the core of this proposal is actually to strengthen our community and prepare for our next stage. What is the next stage? Sushi is now a DeFi blue chip and aims to build an ecosystem. However, DeFi blue chips are very limited in the broader capital markets. It's time to make DeFi more known and involve more people in DeFi. This also means expanding governance to institutional participants, who can bring better proposals and experiences about growth. Disagreements are a good thing; they mean people are discussing and resolving thorny issues. Seeing some institutions play such an active role in discussion and governance, I am encouraged and welcome them to join the Sushi community. The larger and more dynamic our community, the longer the network effect of Sushi will continue, not just in the DeFi space.

Personally, it's interesting to see so many VCs willing to purchase SUSHI without a discount. It's important to note that this is solely for governance participation, becoming a part of our growing community, which truly redefines "participation" and being responsible for "constructive participation." Decentralized organizations are very new, not even a year old, but they will continue to evolve. Interestingly, Sushi will play a significant role in setting standards and processes for this new type of organization.

What are the Sushi team's thoughts on Uniswap?

Uniswap is a great team.

Omakase: I have met many members of the Uniswap team in real life, and they are all very experienced. Of course, in many ways, Sushi and Uniswap are fundamentally different.

Uniswap is more like a traditional company that has been around for 4 years. Sushi, on the other hand, is a decentralized organization, as evident from our rapid feature iterations and product growth. We are not even a year old yet!

Sushi has far surpassed being just an AMM and is gradually growing into an ecosystem. In this system, your digital assets can access a range of financial tools. If you pay attention to Sushi, you will notice that our focus has always been on network effects.

ONSEN welcomes new projects, expanding liquidity mining. MasterChefv2 allows projects to add their own rewards. BentoBox allows any team to deploy their dapp in this app store, easily earning interest while accessing existing balances. The new AMM Trident allows anyone to add new pools and curve types.

Everything Sushi builds is a win-win. Others can build on our open-source platform and succeed, and we grow with them. This is very different from traditional companies.

How is Sushi expanding into various businesses, and what is the target audience?

Sushi is not just an AMM but an ecosystem.

Omakase: Your observation is correct! Sushi is not just an AMM but an ecosystem. If you visit our login page, you will see the community mission statement: Welcome to the DeFi home. Your home starts here.

What does this mean? First, it means that we want to unlock all financial functions on decentralized infrastructure. Any digital asset can access functions such as exchange, lending, leverage, limit orders, etc. You can even use lending to build options and hedge your trades. All of this within one ecosystem. Currently, you can access these functions on 12 chains, and we will continue to deploy on other chains.

Second, it also means that Sushi will capture the horizontal digital asset supply chain: fair launches, auctions, growth, incentives, and management. We want Sushi to be the best place for project launches and growth. Sushi is the Amazon of the digital asset space.

Blockchain is the most efficient settlement layer, and digital assets represent an alternative mechanism for current value creation. This is very powerful and will provide new economic opportunities to many. If you consider the current value creation system: it favors Americans, or those who can establish American companies, obtain venture capital, or pay investment banks to list their companies. This means that if you are not American and cannot raise $20 million, you are actually not participating in the value creation system. Digital assets represent something core to the internet: an effective, fair system that everyone can participate in. Therefore, we hope to attract as many users as possible. We believe that Sushi will be the most user-friendly platform. In terms of setting standards, Sushi will unlock DeFi for everyone.

What DeFi pain points does Sushi aim to address, and what is Trident's positioning?

Trident will be the ultimate AMM.

Omakase: As I mentioned before: Sushi is not just an ecosystem, but an expandable ecosystem. Currently, DeFi has various pain points: fragmented products, poor user experience, lack of proper onboarding, etc. Sushi's goal is to address user experience issues in the next 2 quarters to truly compete with centralized exchanges - the benefits of decentralized infrastructure are lower costs, no permission required, and available to everyone.

Trident has two main advantages. First, Trident is deployed on BentoBox. The concept of virtual balance is very powerful - in fact, most of the liquidity moved from BentoBox to Trident can earn profits from strategies. This will almost double the capital efficiency for liquidity providers. In simple terms, exchanges typically use a certain amount of floating balance to earn interest, and BentoBox efficiently interacts with other yield-generating protocols.

Second, Trident will be the ultimate AMM. This means you can add any pool on it. When we launch Trident, we are actually launching 4 different AMMs and applying a complex routing system. With the development of more AMM types, we will continue to add more in the future, and users will never need to migrate again.

What are the current plans for cross-chain and L2 integration?

Sushi will become chain agnostic.

Omakase: Sushi has done well in multi-chain deployments. Doing something for the twentieth time is very different from doing it for the first time. We are ready to deploy on other chains suitable for deployment. We have a unique limit order feature on Polygon, soon to be brought to other side chains and the Ethereum mainnet. Ultimately, the full feature set will reside on BentoBox across different chains.

We will integrate these BentoBoxes into a more comprehensive ecosystem using Gas Relayers. One day, you will be able to swap across chains from Ethereum while optimizing and rebalancing liquidity on different chains, which is unimaginable. Sushi will become chain agnostic. Once your assets are in BentoBox, you are part of our ecosystem.

Is liquidity mining necessary? Do you see any future trends?

Sushi can now operate without relying on mining rewards.

Omakase: The purpose of liquidity mining rewards is to hedge against potential losses that liquidity providers may face. Capital efficiency is crucial for reducing impermanent loss and even creating impermanent gains and generating more fee revenue. Nowadays, Sushi can achieve this without liquidity mining rewards: new AMMs will include centralized liquidity. All liquidity positions and default balances on BentoBox will earn profits from strategies.

Masterchefv2 has introduced the concept of multiple rewards for each pool (dual mining), which increases mining APY and project enthusiasm to promote Sushi. We will launch a very user-friendly interface for projects to easily track and manage liquidity rewards. This allows projects to easily replicate Sushi's successful reward formula: if the project grows, we grow as well. We repeatedly see the importance of incentives, and the ways these incentives are provided will continue to evolve, eventually transitioning into less token releases, and possibly leading to token burn causing deflation. Undoubtedly, this is very positive for the long-term token economy.

How do you view regulation? Are there still risks with anonymity?

Regulation is reasonable, industry standards are taking shape.

Omakase: Regarding restrictions on the front-end interface, the community needs to discuss and decide, community authorization is necessary. Personally, I don't see any controversy in the regulatory review of synthetic assets collateralized by securities. These have always been known securities, always at risk of being regulated. It is precisely because of this risk that their trading volume is low, and the user experience of trading securities on conventional exchanges and apps is better. However, this is just my opinion, and the final decision will be made by the community. Additionally, everything on Sushi is open-source: anyone can host their own interface.

Frankly, regulatory issues do not bother me because the Sushi ecosystem is rapidly expanding and setting standards. Regulators are correct; the DeFi space is very new and very chaotic. But standards are forming, and existing network effects favor good participants, better code, and systems. Using Sushi standards as an example, from simple to complex. If a token is minted by multisig, we can put a badge on the token page, which does not exclude projects without multisig but gives users more confidence. These standards can become more complex, monitoring token contracts is not far off. If malicious transactions (determined by their nominal value) interact with contracts, warnings can be issued to prevent malicious transactions from front-running or delaying transaction execution.

Such complex standards, Sushi is capable of setting. At the end of the day, regulators care about standards. They currently do not have standards, but Sushi can provide a framework for standards, enhancing user protection. This is within our development and product capabilities, and is the direction we are working towards.

Lastly, I don't think anonymity is a form of protection in real life. DeFi has a culture of using pseudonyms because your background or resume is not actually important; what you do, your code, that's what really matters. There is enough metadata now to identify individuals, and anonymity more reflects the equality and accessibility of DeFi. If you can do something valuable, go ahead!

Axie's popularity, will GameFi be the focus of MISO's recent IDO?

DeFi will deeply integrate with GameFi.

Omakase: Axie is definitely interesting, and in the GameFi space, I think there will be more innovations. As mentioned earlier, the Sushi ecosystem aims to capture the horizontal digital asset supply chain, making it the best place for launching, growing, incentivizing, and managing digital assets. We look forward to more GameFi projects launching on our ecosystem!

Frankly, we provide all the necessary tools for their success. Recently, we launched auctions and introduced the dual reward pool for Yield Guild Games, which has been hugely successful. But this is just the beginning, showing that GameFi can leverage DeFi. With the launch of the Shoyu NFT platform, we will see a deeper integration of DeFi with GameFi, such as NFTs collectible in games, and points in games.