Sushi CTO Joseph Delong Resigns After Reports of Project Infighting

Amid a plummeting token price and rumors of infighting, Sushi Chief Technology Officer Joseph Delong announced on Wednesday that he is stepping away from the project “effective immediately.”

Sushi is the 13th-ranked decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol by total valued locked with $6.25 billion. The project has been hard hit by devastating price action, with the price of SUSHI down 51.2% on the month to $5.95, and by rumors of infighting since the departure of pseudonymous de-facto leader 0xMaki in September.

“I highly recommend the installation of a C-suite from outside the DAO and give them the tools to effectively manage a team. Be wary of any self-proclaimed leaders arising from the current core team,” Delong wrote on Twitter, referring to a decentralized autonomous organization.

Delong, a longtime Ethereum and Web 3 contributor, has worked on an Eth 2.0 client for ConsenSys, contributed to the MolochDAO Ethereum infrastructure fundraising organization and worked on Dapper Labs’ Flow blockchain. He’s known for his outspoken Twitter presence and competitive attitude.

In addition to the tweet thread, Delong also announced the resignation on-chain with a transaction sent to the Sushi treasury multi-sig. The transaction failed.

Sushi is looking to release Trident, a major upgrade expected to include a variety of automated market maker (AMM) models connected through Tines, an order-routing engine, as well as BentoBox, a yield-bearing base layer for the various AMMs. Sushi’s primary product is a fork of Uniswap v2 that is deployed on various blockchains.

When Trident was announced in July, Delong said that the release would be less than 60 days away. The timeline for Trident’s launch is now unclear.

When reached for comment, Delong told CoinDesk the following:

“Long live Sushi.”