Sushi governance under scrutiny as core team faces manipulation accusations

SushiSwap has faced accusations of governance manipulation and financial opacity, with tensions rising over the deletion of its governance forum.

Decentralized crypto exchange SushiSwap has found itself in hot water as the community accuses its core team of deleting parts of its governance forum and disregarding snapshot votes amidst backlash over its financial management.

In an X post in late February, former ex-contributor to SushiSwap, Naim Boubziz, ignited the controversy by highlighting the project’s core team’s deletion of its governance forum amid criticism of its use of treasury funds.

In a follow-up post on Mar. 4, Boubziz wrote that the Sushi operations team had removed four snapshot governance proposals advocating for the restoration of the forum and greater transparency regarding treasury funds. Boubziz also noted that the team limited the creation of new snapshot votes to core team members only.

One proposal from the forum highlighted “serious concerns with the current custody of Sushi treasury funds by the operations team,” urging the SushiSwap community “to take action to rectify the present situation which is not sufficiently transparent nor objectively justifiable within a DAO structure.”

The proposal also urged the suspension of the compensation committee’s duties, bonuses, full disclosure of salaries, and revelation of any legal entities established by Sushi’s operations team. However, no changes have been made since then.

Sources close to the SushiSwap community have alleged in a commentary to The Defiant that the project’s core team was attempting to “hold the DAO hostage,” adding that the team’s response to pushback involved locking forum posts, deleting critical posts, banning users, and stripping roles. Despite mounting concerns, SushiSwap has not addressed the allegations or provided reassurances regarding its management practices publicly at the time of writing.