Sushi Launches Concentrated Liquidity On 13 Blockchains

Sushi is the latest decentralized exchange to capitalize on the expiration of Uniswap V3’s Business Source License, with Sushi rolling out concentrated liquidity features across 13 chains on Thursday.

“The introduction of v3 enables users and LPs to benefit from more trading volume, liquidity, and reduced exposure to potential impermanent loss,” Sushi said in an announcement.

Sushi said it plans to roll out concentrated liquidity alongside a new user interface on each of the 20 networks the exchange operates on.

The project’s SUSHI token is relatively unchanged over the past week.

Concentrated Liquidity

Concentrated liquidity was pioneered by Uniswap v3 in May 2021, allowing liquidity providers to optimize for capital efficiency. The code was released under a Business Source License, prohibiting unauthorized use for two years following its publication.

The popularity of the protocol contributed to Uniswap enjoying a dramatic lead over its rivals by trade volume, with Uniswap’s top three deployments accounting for $1.2B in daily volume or 57.5% of combined DEX volume, according to CoinGecko. Uniswap also boasts a $2.9B total value locked (TVL), according to DeFi Llama.

But with the license expiring on April 1, Uniswap’s old rivals have been quick to fork its code, with PancakeSwap also launching its v3 iteration with concentrated liquidity in the first week of April and amassing $307M in TVL since.

On April 6, Jared Grey, Sushi’s “head chef,” tweeted that Uniswap’s v3 design is “the most capital-efficient AMM model.”

Uniswap sought to preempt an inevitable influx of v3 forks on rival networks in March, with its community backing authorized v3 deployments on BNB Chain and Avalanche.

Governance Saga

Sushi is a veteran DeFi protocol, launching as a Uniswap v2 fork in August 2020, and briefly emerging as the top DEX by TVL after launching a vampire attack intended to siphon liquidity from Uniswap.

However, Sushi struggled to find long-term governance stability after its pseudonymous co-founder attempted to rug-pull the project in October 2020. Co-founder 0xMaki led the protocol for roughly one year, after which months of infighting between Sushi’s core team, investors, and its community culminated in a failed Frog Nation acquisition.

The Sushi community elected Jared Grey as its new head chef in October 2022 after a contentious selection process. Under Grey, Sushi sought to establish formal legal entities in the Cayman Islands and Panama. However, the move was met with a subpoena from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in March.

“If there’s an entity, it’s not a DAO,” Erik Voorhees, the CEO of ShapeShift,wrote on Twitter. “Don’t let lawyers talk you into incorporation… unless you want to be a corporation.”