SushiSwap ‘Head Chef’ Narrowly Wins Vote – The Defiant

Governance has spoken, and the SushiSwap community remains divided on a proposed candidate for its leadership position of “head chef”.

In a poll, members of the decentralized exchange’s governance forum voted to elect Jonathan Howard, a software engineer, as its chief executive by a slim majority of 53%. 

The result comes after more than a week of inflamed and divisive discourse within the SushiSwap community. Many governance forum members were miffed by what they considered Howard’s exorbitant pay package: the head chef may have pocketed more than $10M if certain SUSHI token price targets and other bonus criteria are met.

Binding Poll

The poll was a “temperature check” to determine the sentiment of the membership. Now Howard’s appointment will move to a binding poll in which tokenholders will vote proportionately to the SUSHI they hold. No date has been set for the next vote.

Even so, many community members and Sushi insiders believe there should be a separate vote on the prospective head chef’s compensation package.

“It doesn’t feel like we negotiated the compensation package,” community member Nickjrishwait posted. “This probably should have been two proposals.” 

So the drama is far from over.

‘Have to be Heard’

Neil Bhasin, one of two current members of SushiSwap’s Compensation Committee, told The Defiant he is opposed to conducting a separate vote on compensation. He warned that it could result in a “race to the bottom of hiring the chef that costs the least amount of money.”

When asked if the vote should next be elevated to a snapshot, Bhasin said “I think tokenholders absolutely have to be heard.” There are a number of tokenholders who participate in governance but don’t interact on the forums, he added.

“I think the key is letting productive discussion happen and then ensuring nothing is being censored and that tokenholders eventually get the ability to vote and exercise their governance,” Bhasin said. “It’s unclear to me that two votes solves much, but it does add more information and data to how tokenholders feel which is welcomed.”

Yet Sushi’s core team has not arrived at a consensus on whether to proceed with an on-chain vote, a person familiar with the Sushi core team’s deliberations told The Defiant.

SushiSwap is the fifth-largest decentralized exchange with $1.07B locked, according to DeFiLlama. Its native Sushi token boasts a nearly $294M market cap, according to CoinGecko. 

Howard is the co-founder and chief technology officer of Big Head Club, a studio that creates NFTs based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is also a co-organizer at Pitch Crew, a community of startup founders, and the founder of Step Function, an advisory firm that helps founders through early stage development.

Howard’s nomination should have been a routine appointment. Yet the outcry over his compensation and the process of nominating and confirming his…