Leaked Chats and Bonus Disputes Expose Power Struggle Behind Sushiswap's 0xMaki Ouster

A wave of internal disputes, a whistleblower's dismissal, and a string of leaked documents have pulled back the curtain on tensions inside Sushiswap, the decentralized exchange that has long branded itself as community-led.

Following Chef Nomi's departure from the project, 0xMaki was widely seen as the person who steered Sushiswap through its recovery. When he stepped away from his role on September 18th, speculation about the circumstances began almost immediately.

That speculation gained substance when a team member who had recently been let go posted publicly alleging that internal conflict was undermining the protocol. Separately, several other current and former team members reached out with additional material, corroborating claims that had already begun to surface elsewhere. Taken together, this reporting draws on both on-chain records and off-chain testimony to piece together what has actually been happening within one of DeFi's largest protocols.

Given the nature of the allegations, much of this account inevitably involves competing versions of events. Every claim included here has been checked against available evidence, but readers should weigh the material themselves.

The vote that removed 0xMaki

Contrary to the impression that he chose to walk away, 0xMaki's exit was the result of an internal vote engineered by Joseph Delong. On September 9, 2021, 11 of the 17 participants in a Sushi developer chat voted on a proposal to ask Maki to move into an advisory capacity and step down from the core team. The measure passed with 91% approval, and nine days later 0xMaki announced that he was stepping down.

Sources describe a concentration of influence within Sushiswap around four individuals — Joseph Delong, Omakase, Keno, and Rachel, collectively referred to as JOKR. According to these accounts, 0xMaki was effectively presented with an ultimatum by JOKR: leave, or six other developers would quit, stalling the Trident launch and jeopardizing much of the work already invested in it.

Because 0xMaki held a three-year contract — unlike other team members, whose contracts ran for one year — JOKR could not simply terminate him outright. Instead, he was pushed toward an advisory role without the community being consulted on the decision.

Spending that followed the ouster

Once 0xMaki was out, reports of questionable spending by JOKR began to surface. These included $9,000 restaurant bills in New York during NFT NYC, billed to "Sushi Partners" and never disclosed to the DAO, along with $5,000 tickets purchased for Joseph, Rachel, and Keno to attend VC networking events that did not result in any capital being raised.

A disputed token bonus

A separate controversy stemmed from the BitDAO MISO token sale. As part of that arrangement, BitDAO offered a bonus equal to 2.6% of its token supply to be distributed to Sushi's core members. 0xMaki pushed for that allocation to instead benefit xSushi holders, and the two sides eventually settled on splitting it 50/50 between xSushi holders and core team members.

In practice, however, the portion earmarked for xSushi holders was never distributed — the tokens have remained parked in the Sushi operations wallet, reportedly held back for unspecified "legal reasons."

The share that was distributed among core team members also produced friction, because it was not divided evenly. Joseph, Omakase, Keno, Rachel, and 0xMaki reportedly received larger allocations than the rest of the core team. When other team members raised questions about this, Omakase attributed the uneven split to an idea from 0xMaki — but sources say it was actually Rachel who assigned him blame, when in reality 0xMaki had pushed for the full bonus to go to xSushi holders in the first place. A typical bonus in this distribution was reportedly worth roughly $200,000, while the larger allocations were worth closer to $700,000. Tension among the team reportedly grew further after 0xMaki returned his own bonus.

Compounding matters, the SEC has reportedly been scrutinizing Sushiswap and its US-based team members in connection with the BitDAO sale, prompting the team to act more cautiously to avoid drawing further regulatory attention. A spreadsheet attributed to Rachel is said to document the uneven bonus split.

Leaked internal polls

The volume of leaked internal material reflects how much discontent has built up among Sushi team members since Delong assumed the CTO role. Locating people willing to speak against the current leadership was not difficult, but reporting also included direct review of internal Sushi communications: rekt.news was able to access a Sushi Core chat that had, at the time, been left publicly viewable, revealing the outcomes of internal polls conducted by team members. Screenshots of this material were captured on December 1, 2021. Viewing the poll results required casting a vote, and among those results was a poll in which Rachel narrowly avoided a more damaging outcome — an apparent reaction from colleagues to her role in the bonus dispute.

A core member's personal trading with community funds

Separately, an unnamed "core member" is alleged to have used community funds to trade from a personal account. This person received tokens worth several hundred thousand dollars from the BitDAO MISO sale into a personal wallet, telling colleagues the funds were a "community fund to be used for buying NFTs."

The same individual later told other team members that, following the most recent Cream exploit, he had lost 111,591 SUSHI — worth approximately $1.2 million at the time. He subsequently attempted to push through a transaction that would have refunded himself from the Sushiswap operations multisig; the transaction was rejected. Reports indicate Rachel defended his conduct and was willing to approve a refund, though ultimately none was issued. In his own account of the episode, the core member described the loss as "his oversight" — raising the question of why others should bear responsibility for it.

AG's dismissal

That episode raises a further question: how did Rachel and the core member retain their positions despite this level of mismanagement, while AG — the whistleblower referenced earlier — was terminated simply for raising concerns? AG was let go following an all-hands meeting held at 12:30am her time, which she was not present for, on the stated grounds of "a continued pattern of behaviour that made for a toxic workplace." (Transparent Red, referenced in connection with this episode, is the COO of Strips Finance, a former MISO project.) One anonymous source told rekt.news: "Omakase started the poll, Joseph pinged the poll and Rachel started to make false accusations against her. Shortly after, her google access was cancelled."

Joseph Delong's response

rekt.news put the allegations to Joseph Delong directly, explaining that documents had been received describing alleged misuse of power within Sushiswap, and inviting his account of events before publication. His reply read:

"These accusations and narratives are from a disgruntled employee that was offboarded for continued toxicity and cyberbullying. While it's within your purview to publish, we do not feel this culture and norm of baseless public targeting is something to promote, elevate, or entertain. Internally we take a zero tolerance policy for repeated violations of the workplace code of conduct. The attempt to propagate this narrative demonstrates off boarding was the correct course of action and can only wish AG / sushijokr the best in her professional career."

Notably, this response did not address any of the specific allegations, focusing instead on justifying AG's termination; no further comment was provided when additional questions were sent.

Four days after that statement, Sushiswap published an official post-mortem concerning AG's dismissal. Neither Delong's statement nor the post-mortem directly engaged with the power-dynamic concerns raised by whistleblowers, though the post-mortem did reference planned updates to the Sushi contributor framework.

Delong later addressed the situation more broadly in a Twitter thread, describing the "brutal reality" of Sushi's need to move toward a more formal structure with a clearer hierarchy, and noting that while some former team members had spoken out against him, there were also "plenty of non-vocal people" backing him. In the same period, while also raising concerns about his own compensation, Delong issued an ultimatum and then responded to critics in a notably blunt manner.

One anonymous but well-established source offered this assessment:

"Joseph Delong's contract is expiring in 1 month. The DAO must hold him accountable for the work that has been done and seek another CTO moving forward."

"Uniswap v3 was released 6 months ago, Balancer and Bancor v3 are coming, and Trident has still not been shipped. This is a failure for Sushi."

"Sushi has done well championing new tokens and amazing projects like OlympusDAO, Convex, Illuvium and so on, but all of it has been erased by a CTO who is captivated by a never ending chase of clout and narcissism, a delusional stream of consciousness exposed in broad daylight for everyone to see."

A protocol losing ground

Comparing total value locked across the three largest decentralized exchanges shows Sushiswap trailing its rivals for some time now. As recently as March, Sushiswap was a genuine competitor among the top three DEXs, but it has since fallen well behind the growth posted by the others. At its height, the protocol drew intense interest from venture capitalists, Yearn, influencers, and retail traders alike, all drawn to its "community-led" positioning.

Whether that decline stems primarily from ego and greed, or simply from operational mistakes, remains an open question — as does whether some within the ecosystem have actively wanted to see the project fail even during its strongest period. What Chef Nomi makes of the current situation, whether Joseph Delong will ultimately step down, and whether 0xMaki intends to reassert influence over the protocol are all still unresolved.

Reading both sides

Even with this volume of unflattering material, it's worth considering the pressures on the people involved. Building in DeFi is demanding: working under public scrutiny while managing large sums of other people's money takes a toll, and constant social-media exposure adds further strain, even for executives who spend much of their time on Twitter.

Sushiswap did attempt transparency, but arguably disclosed the wrong things — there was little upside to making individual compensation public, while there remains no real justification for misrepresenting how funds were actually distributed. This episode illustrates a broader pattern: large DAOs, even without a formal corporate structure, tend to concentrate power in the hands of those who pursue it, much like conventional companies. That concentration does not always serve the organization well.

Hierarchy, seniority, and ego persist even within organizations that describe themselves as flat and decentralized. As individuals compete for influence within those structures, conflict is a predictable outcome rather than an aberration. Behind the memes, pseudonymous accounts, alliances, and rivalries, real organizational power is what's actually being contested.

Whether Sushiswap is too significant to fail, and who — if anyone — steps in to stabilize it, remains to be seen.