SushiSwap founder transfers the project control to FTX CEO

Chef Nomi, the anonymous founder behind the viral decentralized finance (DeFi) project SushiSwap, has transferred the project control to FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.

The decision comes soon after Nomi faced intense criticism from the DeFi community for converting a portion of SUSHI tokens, meant for the development of the SushiSwap ecosystem, to ether (ETH) yesterday. The move led to speculations that SushiSwap is a scam, and Nomi had exited the project.

Today, Nomi has transferred the SushiSwap control to Bankman-Fried by handing over admin keys. "I hope SushiSwap does well without me," tweeted Nomi. "Again I did not intend to do any harm. I'm sorry if my decision did not follow what you expected."

Bankman-Fried will now deploy multi-signature (multisig) into SushiSwap smart contracts — a wallet configuration that requires at least two keys to authorize a transaction.

Since its launch on August 28, the SushiSwap project hasn't been out of the news. Yesterday, there was a rumor that Nomi is Band Protocol's CTO, Sorawit Suriyakarn. Nomi, Band, and Suriyakarn have all denied that allegation.

Nomi remains anonymous. The project control transfer news immediately shot up the SUSHI token's price from around $1.8 to $3.2 at the time of writing.