SushiSwap bounced back Sunday after hitting $1.17, gaining 30 percent for the day alone. The DeFi token staged its recovery during Asian trading hours, pushing the price to $2.77 after a 109 percent s
SushiSwap bounced back Sunday after hitting $1.17, gaining 30 percent for the day alone. The DeFi token staged its recovery during Asian trading hours, pushing the price to $2.77 after a 109 percent surge from the weekend lows.
The crash traced to Chef Nomi, SushiSwap's anonymous founder, who withdrew $13 million in SUSHI tokens from the developer fund on September 5. That move spooked investors who'd watched the token fall from $9.50 earlier in the week to below $1.20 by Friday. The fear gripping traders: the founder was abandoning the project.
Monday brought a 30 percent intraday gain for SUSHI. The token also gained against Bitcoin and Ethereum, climbing 30.9 and 26 percent respectively. What comes next remains murky. The token hit $3.19 at its peak, and if it holds above $3, bulls might argue for an uptrend. A break below $2 could trigger deeper selling as traders cash in gains.
SushiSwap is a Uniswap fork with a rewards mechanism: participants earn tokens for providing liquidity to the decentralized exchange. The project had gathered $1.25 billion in locked funds despite lacking an audit. Within days, the token mushroomed from nothing and then imploded.
Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX, became Chef Nomi's replacement. But rumors swirled on crypto Twitter that the anonymous founder was actually Sorawit Suriyakarn, the CTO of Band Protocol. Paul Nattapatsiri, Band's Chief Product Officer, published a Medium post on September 7 to address the speculation. Suriyakarn had reviewed SushiSwap's code, Nattapatsiri said, but reviewing code doesn't make someone the creator.
Chef Nomi later addressed the theories swirling around him. "People asked if I exited scam. I did not. I am still here. I will continue to participate in the discussion. I will help with the technical part. I will help ensure we have a successful migration," he posted on Twitter.
The recovery brought a sign of hope, but what happens next hinges on execution. SushiSwap's foundation remains fragile after the weekend's turmoil.
