DeFi by Design EP#88: DeFi not CeFi w Sushi Head Chef Jared Grey

Transcript

welcome to D5 by Design where we talk all things blockchain and cryptocurrency while striving to educate Empower and enrich it's your boy Andy and welcome back to the D5 site YouTube Channel smash the like button on this video that really helps us out and sit back and enjoy the content thank you very much what's going on guys welcome back to the D5 by Design podcast here today I'm stationed in London for token 49 and and London crypto week Rob's down in Florida and of course here with Jared the new head chef at Sushi swap we know there's been a lot of drama with sushi taking us back all the way to 2020 uh when we first yield Farm sushi so good times

back then for sure and excited to see all of the developments that are happening in in that world now we are in a day today which will have passed by the time this is live of CZ and SPF going at it Head to Head it's almost like you've got like two dragons going at it on the timeline I can't believe that Twitter is free really um yeah here today to talk about what Jared's up to uh with sushi swap um his takes on on defy clear up some of the controversies in the past and see what we got going forward so yeah Rob good morning to you top of the hour how are you good morning yeah doing well back in the States across the pond from you uh doing well stoked to have another

week in crypto with plenty of drama um across the centralized exchange space but it keeps it fun so yeah there's uh there's tons to talk about I'm stoked to hear um what Jared is up to in terms of uh the head chef role um what that kind of entails and the path for sushi going forward um Jared maybe maybe we can start you know at the beginning I think like full transparency like we met you know six to six to nine months ago or something like that and um you were still part of eons and we were talking about kind of what that project was maybe you could you could start there and we can talk about how that path LED you to the head chef

role at Sushi today yeah yeah good to see you guys again too um so yeah I mean I started out in crypto and 2016 kind of officially 2017 got involved in in helping protocols and some altcoin projects from like the engineering and business admin side and um that kind of just ballooned into uh the path that that led me here and I um along the way you know launched an exchange with one of the altcoin projects called the finnian and we we built that and ran that for about a year and a half and then pivoted fully into

D5 with that project in in April of 2020 and um yeah I mean once once defy really kind of hit hard and defy summer um was a thing I pretty much just kind of fell in love with the that part part of the industry and um yeah I mean I I pretty much uh two or three months after we launched but finnian knew that that kind of the future of the industry is really what started the industry right which is it's really defy decentralization of these assets and these networks people having that autonomy being in control of their own

destiny you know all the the kind of philosophical drivers that may have gotten muddied along the way and do kind of get muddied in some way every cycle is you know speculation and greed is kind of pushing full blast but yeah I mean eons came out of that that um you know defy summer April 2020 and uh yeah we were I think one of the first 10 wallets um bitfinians wallets to mine sushi and uh we were doing that to you know build up liquidity for a pair for the exchange and and so been involved with it since

it started really and I would say that probably the last year I'd been so focused on eons and some of the other stuff that I was doing that I didn't really pay much attention to Sushi like internally right I wasn't part of the Discord or whatever and you see topographically at a high level what goes on pretty much uh if you're involved in the industry with these kind of big big protocols but yeah I mean I met you guys first I think it was either February or March of this is it this year yeah it's this year and um yeah we were talking about you know potentially working together on the Eon stuff at the time you know eons was a was one of the kind of first

um well we wanted it to be one of the first like asset back token um D5 protocols where you could kind of build you know pseudo banking infrastructure and I say pseudo Banking and that the the infrastructure was was defy but it had kind of the the use case of what people are familiar with uh in their like Chase Banks and stuff so it was like trying to bridge that Gap without um you know becoming a bank essentially in the in the traditional sense and that kind of got um uh put on hold because actually the meeting we had was you know we're discussing uh a lot of the stuff going on behind the scenes and the partner we

had been working with at the time uh who was closing around was going through some restructuring and so that's actually coming to the conclusion it looks like uh to for that project to get funded so yeah I mean it just took longer and in that process of me sitting around and doing consulting the head chef candidacy stuff popped up and I I was just like man this is this is an opportunity of of like my lifetime I think because of all the stuff I'd been doing in the space uh it just seemed like the perfect uh intersection of all of that intercept you know work and and um experience that I had accumulated since I got into the space and I'd say like today is the start of the fifth week of

you know like my official role and um yeah I don't want to sound corny or anything but I like everyday fall more in love with like what Sushi stands for and what we can do with it and how we can move things forward because the team's super passionate talented and um yeah I feel like this is a great fit yeah and the team has been through a lot for sure uh with Joseph last guy as well as just all the other uh controversies and and things that have happened and yeah I I remember when we met you you mentioned how active you were in in D5 which kind of surprised me but also you know it makes sense because once you

kind of mess around a little bit and you try a few things out it's tough to tough to just stop and and and you know kind of uh look elsewhere so a lot of people kind of know sushi right now as a DEX um and you know that's kind of what it got its name for uh you know with Sam and liquidity Mining and then kind of uh uh the the uniswap Clone clearly there's other things happening uh on the back end of sushi but I'm curious for for you now since uh since you've taken over over the last four or five weeks has has the vision for sushi changed or has it stayed age relatively the same um you know and of course we're curious

what what that is yeah I mean I I think that the vision that I had for sushi during the candidacy process um aligned and still aligns well with the team's road map that they already had that they had been you know putting together since uh they were kind of uh without a head chef for you know several months and so I would say that my inclusion into the sushi team in this role and the vision that I bring for how I think Sushi can expand its its Market

you know distribution throughout D5 and crypto uh as a market more more generally and then maybe outside of that in some opportunities right uh aligns really well with the team's Ambitions and uh you know my goal is to bring value and not derail where they're kind of headed naturally but to augment it and if I have ideas for things that you know amplify those efforts uh that's just like a benefit and I do you know and and that is some of the stuff that we're working on right now I think there's a lot of opportunity for the

sushi brand to go through kind of a revitalization to where people are excited about it again you know because it kind of does have um some products that that could use some attention and and some more like product Market fit uh within within D5 and so I think there's an opportunity to just Leverage The Brand in a really holistic way and push forward the products that are that are working keep on with the cross chain um mission statement and really expand distribution there for the brand but also leverage that in and approach it and then approach through other

product launches but in a way that doesn't create you know kind of cognitive overload of the brand and also stress the team by putting too much on their plate because I think that's maybe something that Sushi has you know had a challenge with in the past is how does it differentiate itself from that claim of being a uniswap clone okay let's ship as many products as possible uh but almost maybe at the expense of of those products having the most the chance at the most success they could have so yeah well for the best fit and that you know that kind of

brings me to a good point which you know we've seen weekly Dex volumes just drop off a cliff in general so snow attacking sushi in any manner but we've we've also seen the ratio of swaps and volume on Sushi compared to unit swap continuously reach new lows and I think that's because one liquidity two kind of like brand name um but also a bit probably because of the past controversy now you've mentioned you know kind of trying to be this trying trying to be a a leader while also kind of not trying to get in the way which brings me to an interesting point of like this decentralized kind of Dao governance infrastructure how do you balance kind of being a leader uh and trying to push

forward certain efforts uh while also kind of uh maintaining this veil of decentralization as well as actually putting things through governance and making sure that the community is heard that a team you know is following their you know their roadmap things that they want to do um yeah I'm curious like how you how you try to tackle you know certain initiatives like volume and users and product Market fit um you know being the leader while also maintaining that you know decentralization and kind of Dow structure uh which may or may not be kind of uh in impedement you know we've seen um some Dows do very well and we've seen kind of other Dallas struggle to kind of make things happen because

um I guess decentralization kind of causes things to happen slower or less less things to happen because of less agreement so um yeah broadly curious about how you manage you know kind of getting things done while also you know making sure the community and governance is all taken care of yeah I mean that's the challenge of of the entire experiment I don't think it it's Unique to Sushi I think the challenges that are unique to Sushi uh in terms of governance and voting and like stakeholder alignment are kind of the same um in anything you do right so it's it's more of

well I'll I'll step back first and say like how I plan to lead and just kind of like my personality is um you know I'm not I don't think of myself as being like the smartest guy in the room right I just am very good at putting the right people together and getting them to have like a singular vision and alignment and getting tasks done and you know uh executive leadership in a lot of ways like if you want to think of the head chef as a CEO which in many ways I'm not but it's an operations um role right so you have to bring

operational efficiency to these um to these organizations whether it's a dow or a typical corporate structure or whatever and that just means that you have to be a really good people person I think you also have to bring a vision and you have to be like good at the minutia of of planning and stuff like that but it's more about getting people aligned um they already kind of have a vision here like I was saying it's like a lot of what my vision is kind of already complements them and so the alignment is is happening very naturally and organically uh and then obviously you know if you want to label the head chef as a like an

executive decision maker people want you to make that decision right many people look towards that kind of figurehead role as the guy who's going to take the liability for making certain decisions right and you kind of steer uh that way so I think that that's very standard my personality is pretty laid back I don't micromanage people you know it's a lot of goal setting and just helping people make sure that they have the resources they need I think with the the governance stuff and the the approach to like Community stakeholder alignment is very interesting

um I would say with sushi it's not quite a veil of decentralization it actually is pretty decentralized there's quite a lot of people uh even our you know the processes that we take internally everyone's distributed across the entire planet um and so the challenge is there with with you know just organizationally uh are real but from the community side of things it's a lot about listening you know like you can't you can't expect to impose your will like the best ideas win right now where it gets a little muddy is are they the best ideas for you are they the best

ideas for the community a portion of the community the largest bag holders the smallest bag it's like what is the alignment right or what are people rallying behind and so I think it's really important that that the protocol has that mission statement that Vision so that the people that that get involved in your governance process in your protocol come into that expecting a certain kind of you know governance participation to occur that the ideas that get presented you know aren't going to be super controversial because mostly they'll be in alignment with that mission statement that your protocol puts forth I think that makes it real not really easy makes it maybe a little

bit easier but I I think that Sushi may have had some fragmentation historically in that in that way and it could be just that you know at times maybe it suffered a little bit of a identity crisis with leadership too many products things like that and so the the messaging to the to the industry gets a little diluted and so that's one thing we're working on we want to get sushi back into people's minds but with a certain goal right a certain mission statement well you can't just leave us with that what is the and I know Rob's diet but yeah yeah what is the uh what is the identity here Rabia please yeah yeah I'm

I'm thinking about like the balance you know as a member of of the sushi community and as you come together with the rest of the community to align the community's vision in a common effort towards you know a certain mission you know what is the balance of of centralization in the head chef role like what's the balance of that role with the rest of the community's decentralization and like what what's the balance there like do you have more of a say in terms of what that mission is and how you get there then maybe the community at large and then I'm also like thinking generally what what's the balance that

you see between centralization in you know these the centralized exchanges what's the balance between that those modes of exchange and the decentralized modes of exchange that that we have right now they seem kind of secular is there is there a is there a vision you have where they come together or is there a balance um of of centralization and decentralization that maybe we're at right now or maybe we're trending in that direction yeah that's an interesting question um how I view my role like as it pertains to the question you asked

like the first question you asked is like more of a filter right so like yes I have ideas like anyone else in the community uh can have and maybe I have information that the that the community doesn't have right because I'm tapped into all of the different things going on behind the scenes other projects reach out and and want to work together and so there's things going on excuse me in in my role that maybe enhance that that kind of filter-esque role that I have but also you know ideas and proposals that come from the community uh we're we're dealing with those in real time and the

ones that may be better and so there are some really great proposals they would come through me in a sense of like I'm not the art you know the the Arbiter of like yes or no it's more of like okay what are the merits of this let me help uh maybe navigate the the conversation the community's having for how that proposal plays into the portions of information that they don't have access to and try and make all of that as transparent as possible so that the vision and the mission statement that Sushi kind of stands on those proposals align with that and that we're pushing the protocol forward we're not you know fragmenting it further or having you know factions of the

community uh you know I don't want to say it attack but you know you can have anyone in these decentralized communities right come in and put any kind of proposal up so you have to have a filter process does this make sense for sushi if it does let's get the community you know chatting about it more let's create this dialogue so that's kind of how I view my role um more of like a filter less of like these are my ideas uh I don't really want to be that guy like I said I have ideas if they're good ideas the community can rally behind them um but yeah and then the the second question about how I view centralized exchanges and deep and

decentralized exchanges do you mean like where I see the future of the industry in terms of them being competitors or how do you mean yeah what what's the what's the balance of centralization and decentralization in our community the crypto community at Large maybe that that's your specific you know individual vision and then maybe that aligns or doesn't align with Sushi's Vision you know why or why not so I think long term I would like to see personally decentralized exchanges become the prominent mode of exchange right I think that they serve

the ethos of crypto obviously that was first written about in the Bitcoin white paper the best right uh do I think that like pragmatically that will happen where centralized exchanges go away completely probably not on like a quick timeline maybe in like 20 years or 30 years or whatever maybe it's sooner but I think that the thing that centralized exchanges do really well right as they aggregate liquidity which makes the trading experience better you don't have these fragmented

liquidity Pairs and then you also have support you have customer support which is better usually I mean when you compare it to most dexes I mean in sushi we have a whole support team and stuff that's there so like people are getting a centralized exchange support experience but most exchanges uh centralized exchanges compared to other dexes that aren't Sushi I think have a better support experience and then I would say that um the way that you swap on a DEX historically has had a higher technical uh proficiency barrier to entry for people right you had to download a

wallet most people are like I don't even know what a wallet is okay barrier one then before you had the ability to the UI to click uh from Network to network you had to go in and enter an RPC right into your wallet I mean good luck you know these were things we were trying like we saw immediately going back to eons and why we were building the app to get rid of all that stuff so that people could literally access it the way they download their Chase or Bank of America app it's very familiar that that ux is is something that they don't have that they're not you know just giving up on I mean essentially that's what's happening so I think that

um as dex's continually improve on the user experience in all of those areas they will gain more ground I also think that technologically uh you know we're still improving on on what an amm uh but what the best model is to give the best types of pricing the best LP experience how to address some permanent loss stuff like that that centralized exchange operator kind of traditionally absorbs all of that liability and risk and if they fail you have another one that goes on or that you can go to as a customer so I think

the next three to five years for the Dex experience addressing kind of all of those things I think I think you'll see at least parity I would like to see dexes get the feature parody and then I would like to see them get to market share parity and then you have a real you have a real interesting industry and Marketplace yeah you know what's interesting is we've seen um if you go on centralized exchanges now they will offer you uh decks like swap feature like they'll offer you the the UI so like I would argue that the that while I agree that the UI for connecting a wallet and doing your network and that and and gas and such is much more difficult than just

clicking order buy or sell on the centralized exchange I think the swap uh kind of UI is extremely simple for people to use it's very much like choose the course you want to sell and buy um but yeah I think to add on to your point it's definitely still not it doesn't rival centralized exchanges yet because of that um now we were we were talking about the identity of sushi and I'm still extremely curious about what what that is because we had we started with the decks we got uh the sushi bar and Kashi and the lending and the there's a bunch of other other kind of products happening but like you said you're you're focused on kind of securing the

vision again and bringing the identity and brand back into people's kind of circle and reality of of attention so I'm I'm curious what you and the team have kind of chosen to focus on as the identity and brand of Sushi's at decks is it a multi-product suite multi-chain kind of where's your thoughts here yeah I I wrote about this actually in the The Proposal I put forth during the candidacy and like this discussion the election or whatever you want to call it um and the way I've used Sushi is a D5 toolkit it's not just an amm it's not just a lending platform and I think historically that's been really interesting I think that the

products have been somewhat neglected and it's not the fault of of uh anyone on the team as much I think as it is the market um attention uh the Market's attention span and also kind of the turnover in the leadership and some of the drama that that revolved around that and I also think too that you know um all these kind of things happen for a reason and and the again the team that's here now is the kind of battle tested and tried and true and they just grind they they grind harder than anyone I've ever worked with in crypto which is

really refreshing uh the way I view the the mission for or the brand identity for for sushi is as a D5 toolkit and the mission statement you'll see over the next few weeks and and through q1 is to Foster that um brand messaging into the market so that people are thinking of us in that way oh I need to do this I'm going to go to sushi oh I need to do that I'm going to go to sushi oh I'm going to do that I'm going to go to sushi whether it's lending swapping uh I've alluded to it on on on on Twitter so I guess I'll just say it now you know we're looking to do a perps platform so we're going through that process so if people are doing Futures

Trading and you know they want to to um be under the sushi brand they'll they'll have access to that you know we want to do um well I'll stop there because there's some other things that are still kind of in discovering discussions well obviously the show you platform right so like the show you platform has been you know I had a soft launch a little over or about a year ago and the team was like you know we want to do this the right the right way there's a lot more we can do let's go build the best plat the best nft Market platform Marketplace platform that we can and relaunch this in the in the right way and so we're really close like

internally we have a beta uh scheduled for the end of this month it'll go through all the internal processes of like beta testing and stuff like that and um and I think I'll stop there on that because I don't want to give too much I know like nft Marketplace is as competitive as the amm marketplace and I don't want to leak any you know anything ahead of the teams uh desire to do so but yeah I mean thinking of it that way but you know the problem there or not the problem but the challenge there is how do you do that in a way that doesn't stress the team's resources financially and from like a talent standpoint and so you know I'm

and I put this forth in my proposal so it's not like I'm leaking anything uh yeah so I feel comfortable with saying it but Sushi labs style entity and arm and so the first portion of that was us establishing the legal entity organization organizational structure that's going through or past snapshot it's going through all of the paperwork filing and all of that stuff and then within that structure will become a sushi Labs armor we would look to raise money to do more like uh the you know we want to develop products

in a way that gives us the ability to kind of de-risk the main treasury because there's been a lot of uh value lost in my opinion over the course of the last couple of years from the main Sushi treasury with not the greatest Roi and then right into a bear market so the goal is to kind of segment that that risk and then allow products to be funded and launched and have the best chance of success uh without the liability to the main treasury so that's how I I plan to move those things forward it's a much more scalable you can take a lot more um risks when you do those kind of venture-backed arms and I use the word

uh Venture back very Loosely this isn't going to be like solely VC funded products you know these are going to be uh products that that we may move to Alpha and then do like token launches and stuff like that or maybe we don't um but we're going to do it in a way that isn't directly funded by by the sushi Treasury awesome yeah that that hits on you know tons of new value creation as a result of all the the kind of breakout points that that you have introduced in your proposal and that Sushi has at its disposal to start lever like venturing into these new arms

the perf's protocol you know nft Marketplace was touched on there there's tons of product offerings that um are like now reaching their their own product Market fit and then the sushi brand is able to Umbrella all of those products and recycle value throughout the entire Sushi community and I mean let's be frank uniswap doesn't you know I I'm curious whether you see it as like a healthy competition kind of between the decentralized exchanges as we're seeing the centralized exchanges start to move maybe from healthy competition into unhealthy competition but it seems like sushi is like kind of the the

quickest growing brand in terms of like the brand recognition and the product Suite that that is available for a comprehensive D5 toolkit um available in the you know ecosystem right now yeah I think and I kind of touched on this like a little bit Sushi has a really recognizable brand right so and which is great for like distribution of uh of that into the marketplace the problem is is it's lacked kind of uh

a strong mission statement and you know and strong execution um it's had periods of that where it's seen a lot of success um but I think you know it's languished for a little while and and bringing me in I think was the team's desire to bring in a candidate that could help them build up that momentum and get get that alignment so that they can go out and execute like they have in the past and so that's what I'm here to help them do but you're absolutely right with with the sushi brand how it exists now launching these types of products gives us immediate

distribution into the market and it's much easier for sushi to do a product and speculate on whether it's going to be successful then and you know a startup that has to gain that type of attention and that kind of uh distribution in the market they're going to be at a significant disadvantage and so I think that's actually a way that I view Sushi's competition with uniswap I don't think we're in competition with uniswap uh at least not yet because I don't think of of sushi as only a DEX I think of it I think of sushi as one uh as the decks as

one product vertical in that D5 toolkit and I want people to be able to come into the sushi product line and not have to leave so I guess in a way they are competition but they're not I'm not going to try and compete with uniswap Labs on R D when they have five billion dollars at their disposal that would be foolish I don't think that's a secret to anyone I think the way that we do um we do what's best for sushi and give it the greatest chance to have that revital Revitalize success and go forward is this this multi-product uh approach but in a way that's different from how it's

done in the past because it's launched Kashi and then it kind of languished right um it's the same as you roll out any of these other products whether it's a perks platform or an nft platform or a wallet or whatever um you have to be mindful of of how you of how you do it so that you don't think that you you Leverage The Brand you have now to have the greatest chance of success really right with the lowest liability and the way I view that liability is talent and Treasury right if you can if you can remove those two things at least from the main Sushi treasury then you have the ability to

to do a lot more cool things and hit on multiple winners yep yeah it's uh having that having that kind of uh a backstop especially with the bear Market that we've been in I mean I'm sure it's been tough for a lot of teams kind of seeing that um they had probably millions in their treasury in their own token and then realizing that potentially either the market cap has gone down significantly as well as the liquidity so that it's become like almost an illiquid stack I think that's kind of what what we're seeing Now with uh Sam and FTX they've got a bunch of uh solana-based tokens um and unfortunately that ecosystem was super predatory on retail there's a lot

of of uh of tokens there with a market cap of around like 100 to 200 million or even like 50 to 100 million with a fully diluted cap of like you know five billion so it's like it's a ridiculous amount of new of tokens that have yet to be uh you know unlocked um and so yeah I mean we've definitely seen that so being able to push uh push through that these types of unlocks and just overall token liquidity going down um through through the bear Market allows you obviously to push through the bull now kind of on that on that statement and being that you were active as well in D5 summer well you knew that you wouldn't pick up your Ledger if there was a new 200 Farm launch because you just launched or you

just jumped into the one last night that was eighteen hundred percent so why am I going to wake up in the morning for 200 nowadays I'm just trying to get 10 so what's going on here Jared why why do you believe yields are down I mean aside from if there is an answer aside from just speculation being down in kind of bear Market um but on the contrary also why and how can we get speculation back yields going back higher um what's going to bring D5 yields back um you know to you know exciting levels if if you will or you know will they ever get back there um so I'm just curious about your thoughts about what happened you know kind of what's compressed yields and then where where we're going in the future uh with

overall yields in D5 well I think it's a combination of a few factors um but you had kind of a Black Swan liquidity event right where we were all stuck in our houses for two years uh not here in Florida I guess but everywhere else in the world and people were you know they were getting um free money in some instances in the U.S you know I say that sparingly because a lot of people suffered whether or not they got federal assistance or state assistance but they were sitting at home in many in many cases bored with extra um

extra Degen tolerance if you will and so people were seeing insane games in the in the in the in every Market really for the most part and so I think that that drove quite a lot of what we experienced in D5 for those types of yields right I also will say that I think that we've foreign you know at the start of the market you have kind of endless opportunities as far as ideas are concerned right and so like at the beginning liquidity mining was relatively new I mean there you have uh what was it uh how was the The One

exchange compound went first I think that that pre-dated combat it was a centralized exchange that F coin I think it was something like that but you know they kind of pioneered liquidity Mining and uh but then D5 you know took it and ran with it and yeah people were just going absolutely insane on it and I think that uh the desire for attention in a new product ecosystem or new ideas were popping up literally every day and then there were products that were popping up literally because other other products that were new ideas were failing and so the next product that

came up was you know A variation on that idea that was fixing that idea and so like oh yeah let's just iterate and iterate and every time we iterate let's launch a new token on a new platform and this is amazing you know and liquidity is endless because it just keeps pumping into the market and you get you know and so yeah you have this parabolic effect from the liquidity but you also have the parabolic effect from the ideas right ideas Plateau people are tired you know like people you know you've heard it bull market burnout people just get tired and they're like man and then you get enough people to get burnt by catching the bottom part of that distribution of the of the curve and they leave so you know I think that's one of the

things you pointed out about the Solana ecosystem that I think the FTX and and other people who farmed those types of tokens were really Savvy from a business standpoint to use that that mechanism to bootstrap um their own treasury right they were able to take out billions of dollars from the market through that mechanism and use it to build a really strong brand um I think that they're probably okay and solvent but uh I have no idea but I I think that Sam is a very very smart person who's surrounded by some even smarter people than he is and that they have probably planned for that at least I would hope that they would

having seen a few Cycles in crypto this isn't a new phenomenon where projects have huge USD uh treasuries denominated in their own token right they don't put any kind of Treasury diversification in place the market downturns and then a bunch of them die and and that's not good for the ecosystem but at the same time it's like it's just natural so I think um you know Sushi itself is has kind of is you know we're going through some restructuring to be able to address that issue for ourselves you know I would say that the the the former teams you know could have likely planned for

for this Market um it's hard though because you know you have to combat fomo uh of the community saying no the token's going to 200 don't liquidate the treasury because then it's more liquid token on the market and then that'll suppress the price so you have to like you have to be really pragmatic and you have to be like thinking long term and unfortunately crypto is is is traditionally allowed people to overly satisfy their their their uh their their desire for quick returns right they get I mean the super frictionless uh Market where you just buy a token now you're exposed right you

know it traditionally didn't have to go anywhere really like you didn't have to go to a broker you didn't have to go fill out a form down and eat you know it uh puts the one down the street for me like a traditional brick and mortar brokerage right it was like man I'm just gonna get this coinbase account by this token or I'm gonna go over here to pancake pancake swap or sushi you're gonna buy this token and I'm in the market now um no deposit minimums no disclosures nothing right so that fed into that whole fomo uh and I I don't think it was healthy it was exciting but I don't think it was healthy and the teams that didn't plan for it yeah I mean it's gonna be a tough tough slog ahead yeah and so how do we get how do we get going

forward what's the yields going to be looking like how do they come back are they like are we going to see good yields again it's just a matter of speculative activity you think or you know I've got this theory that defy interest rates on stable coins actually are inverse to what the interest rates are in the real world where right now the rates on Stables are less than the rates in in the that you can get on a treasury bill for 10 year or something however if they pull rates all the way back down or or lower speculative activity across the entire world will increase thus people will borrow more stable coins to buy more crypto or to do other speculative activity on chain so the the rate of of lending of stable coins will go higher so that would just boost yields across the entire system

that's my thesis as far as like macro but like macro or not macro or just or Justify like it you know do you agree with that or do you have other other thesis as to how uh yield is going to be created you know real yield has been a theme that we've seen you know what's kind of your thoughts on just the the state of uh generating good yield in D5 over the coming you know let's call a couple years or months to years I think you asked me the same question the first time we we had lunch like back in March or whatever and uh this I think this was one of the ones where I just I don't necessarily disagree with you

but I don't know because I think that there are so many factors that come into play that what I think about it doesn't really matter it's more of like um what products do I think people are going to use whether you know rates are high or rates are low the real thing that matters is like liquidity and so like obviously liquidity is leaving the marketplace I think people are edging their risk uh for a potential like catastrophic Global recession will that happen I don't know uh people who are much smarter in economics don't even agree across that industry

and so I think that like my personal opinion doesn't matter as much there as as it pertains to like planning for product development and how we address um people people's access of utility to the marketplace because that's again kind of plays into the thesis of the D5 toolkit mission statement for sushi um could it happen yes your your thesis could be right I think personally it's less likely to happen because if we hit a recession a global recession people are going to

be like hoarding dollars or uh physical assets I'm not sure that the same people that were in their homes and in their bedrooms speculating in defy originally are going to be the ones that are bringing like on-chain uh liquidity to try and hedge or take advantage of of yields and those you know it's a feedback loop so they'd have to come on chain to hedge and then the the borrow more stables for that yield to go up so I don't know could it happen sure do I think it's likely to happen I don't think so but yeah I don't know we'll see yeah it seems like uh going forward the

pace of speculation uh is is a bit slower we're not kind of seeing like everything all at once all of that speculation flood into the market maybe because there is just like General disclosures kind of people you know just kind of understand like D5 what it is a little bit more and it's not as uh unknown or shiny as it as it used to be um and people were aping in because it was so new and rare and and people were interested in and what it could offer them and now people understand it there's still functionality and value that it offers just not quite that speculative entertainment driven froth

um that really drives the masses um and you know when when you're looking at liquidity sustainably um you're looking at like growing a portfolio not you know based on the the market driven froth um that maybe is best suited for like you know holding Sushi totally in a war chest um like what else do you diversify into on behalf of a community like taking the sushi treasury into some other assets imagine it's probably not t-bills but it's also not entirely you know sushi in the in that treasury like what are some of the appropriate assets

maybe what's the distribution like what are what are what are your plans um to drive uh the sushi Treasury aside from pump Sushi to the Moon because it's working I have no bearing over anything going on with the price this is not Financial advice I am a meme person only I'm I'm an AI meme bot I'm not even real yes um yeah how do we diversify so I think you know honestly we're going through some some really in-depth thought exercises and some modeling

exercises for how to best do that we have some ideas but I don't want to put anything out into the market that's kind of an un you know an unrefined idea and have anyone speculate on whether or not that's the best approach and the next thing I know I'm getting tagged in something on Twitter that you know I I promised this or I said that and then we we go a separate way or you know the idea that I might mention uh anger somebody or something so I'm just very aware of of saying things before you know prematurely but I think there is a clear path for when you have a treasury that is worth a significant value for you to diversify into very low

risk uh exposure I think for sushi it could make sense that most of that looks like um you know some some very low yield stable coin loans um stuff like that I don't think that you have to get too carried away with 30 points of of diversification and have all of this uh fragmentation for when you need your liquidity but I think that you can definitely make it actionable and not keep it in your native coin and have all of that exposure to the price volatility I think that's I think that's so just to be honest like I'm sure someone will watch this and be annoyed with the statement but I just

think it's really poor planning you know like in the real world when companies do similar types of non-hedge strategies that typically get a government bailout or they go under right and so like or they get a bank loan and then they have to pay that off uh and if they have no assets they don't get a bank loan they go under so I think like it's just poor planning you know we're just going to plan better the goal is to bring more value to the treasury through these things I've I've promoted here to you guys uh some other ideas that I've not finalized yet that you'll likely see like posted about and then proposed on the sushi forums

in the coming weeks and then um once that treasury is to a place where you're looking at a you know 50 or 100 million dollar value then you can take steps to diversify it and it almost becomes like an endowment fund to the right to the uh project where you're not really having to spend uh the the the collateral you're just living off the interest right if you will and so that's where I hope to get I hope to get sushi to that place again where it has the opportunity that it had in the past with the war chest that it had and then um kind of step back from that and and

let the Dow handle it all and you know the best ideas will win the best treasury management approach will win but you kind of need someone to bootstrap that strategy and so that's that's what I'm working on yeah on passive incoming it didn't even make it to Twitter I'm oh I'm already getting married all right Jared it was a pleasure um uh having you on and chatting again um yeah thanks thanks a bunch excited to see Sushi grow as active users community members loyalists since day one really yeah liquidity so um yeah cheers man thank you for coming

on for sure and don't be strangers man and have lunch again sometime when you're in Tampa and and chat about this stuff again I'm sure cheers all right