Uniswap Copycat Locks in Over a Billion Dollars, SUSHI Gets Listed on FTX, Binance, & Huobi

As we reported last week, the latest hot DeFi project in the market is Sushi, a clone of the most popular DEX Uniswap — it accounts for more than 60% of all DEX volume.

After YFI, YAM, Spaghetti, and Based, now it’s time for Sushi.

In just over three days, the project has surpassed 1 billion in total value locked in it. In the first 24 hours of its launch, this unaudited project locked up more than $250 million.

However, the project won’t stay audited for long as QuantStamp and PeckShield are onboard for auditing the protocol, as shared by the head of the anonymous team working on Sushi, Chef Nomi.

This automated market maker is based on Uniswap with the difference that it has its own governance token, SUSHI, that favors early liquidity providers.

The token surged above $11 today. Up more than 200%, the DeFi world is all about “Act first and think later.”

It makes sense that Sushi has copied Uniswap, given that the AMM has made a hattrick of beating the centralized exchange Coinbase Pro in 24 hours volume. And Sushi has played an important role in this volume and driving Uniswap’s liquidity above a billion-dollar.

Nearly 79% of the total value locked in SushiSwap is actually contributing to Uniswap.

Not Good for Uniswap

Marketed as the “evolution” of Uniswap protocol design, this project incentivizes liquidity to migrate from Uniswap to SushiSwap, which is not good for the former as it would lead to a drop in its volume and liquidity.

SUSHI also provides the holders 0.05% of every transaction made on the platform. Trader and economist Alex Kruger noted,

“Sushiswap is a brilliant Uniswap copy-cat with governance tokens implementing an interesting approach using Uniswap LP tokens to drain Uniswap (its competitor) from its liquidity.”

SushiSwap distributes its governance tokens to those staking Uniswap LP tokens, and SUSHI holders receive fees generated by the clone. Kruger said,

“This means that now crypto projects not owned by the community are at risk of getting attacked and made redundant.”

There have also been some concerns about being a backdoor to the contract that could result in the theft of the locked amount.

SushiSwap TVL might be the best DeFi greed and stupidity index we have. It's the purest indicator for how much money degens are willing to light on fire.

— Spencer Noon (@spencernoon) August 28, 2020

Synthetix founder Kain Warwick noted that the leading derivatives platform FTX is contributing 20 to 30% of the entire AUM of Sushi.

The exchange has already launched Sushi perpetual futures. Huobi and Binance have also listed the token today. Warwick cautioned,

“these contracts are not zero risk, you have to be prepared for total loss, so putting tens of millions of dollars in them seems bizarre, unless it is low single digits of your AUM.”