protos.com
Recently, the SushiSwap community voted on a proposal that signaled support for transferring nearly the entirety of the treasury from the DAO to a ‘Labs’ entity. Sushigov.eth, the operational multisig for SushiSwap, voted for the first time in a governance proposal, voting ‘Yay’ with 5.5 million SUSHIPOWER, the largest individual voter, and approximately 30% of the votes in favor.
Recently, sushigov.eth received significant quantities of Sushi, including approximately 1.9 million on April 4, from 0x4bb4c1B0745ef7B4642fEECcd0740deC417ca0a0, an address that resolves to *
.eth. It also received an additional 1.78 million Sushi on April 3, as well as two additional deposits of 1.9 million and 1.8 million from that same address.
This signal vote passed by a margin of approximately 8 million votes.
Sushi’s restructuring
This is the latest step in what’s become a years-long effort for the oft-controversial Sushi organization to restructure itself. Since then, Sushi has deleted or privated discussion of these changes on its governance forum.
In 2022, the Sushi community voted to begin restructuring and, as part of this process, received advice from law firm Fenwick & West.
The following year, Sushi launched a new proposal noting that it intended to switch its legal advice from Fenwick & West to Gresham International. The forum discussion of this change is also no longer available but a review of archives reveals a community note in which a user claims that they have “been in the legal industry most of my career and I’ve never heard of Gresham. So I’m not sure they are a leading international firm.”
Jared Grey, Sushi’s ‘head chef,’ defended the decision by noting that Gresham International “worked with many projects in the space” and further added that Fenwick’s proposal “wasn’t sufficient to meet the needs of the DAO.”
Gresham International’s website does note several projects it has worked for in the space, including RadioShack, as well as less well-known firms like CryptoCammel mining, ArabChain, Quantum Kingdom of Zululand, and AFCash a token issued by Africunia Bank (note: this does not seem to be a bank).
Read more: SushiSwap team wants to kill DAO to benefit themselves
Protos had asked whether or not Gresham International had advised Sushi on the recent movement of assets from the DAO to the new Labs entities, to which Evans responded, “We cannot comment on any work that we undertake for clients as a matter of privacy.”
Gresham International’s Gitbook notes that a project it previously worked with, Aubit, had significant problems, including “criminal activities.” However, it also noted that Aubit “switched to their own in-house team and the use of other third party counsel for some years since our engagement.”
This is followed by another post related to a lawsuit that named Gresham. The firm noted, “As Gresham US is a company that has worked with Wyoming and its legislature, we are aware that Wyoming is forward thinking and we consider the state to be a friend of Gresham International. We have no doubt that a Jury and Judge will see this lawsuit for what it is and who the parties involved are.”
Currently, the implementation vote to continue the movement of assets from the DAO to the Labs entity currently has approximately 99% ‘Yay’ votes, including, of course, sushigov.eth.
Update 2024-04-24 16:47 UTC: Removed discussion of Gresham International’s awards after Gresham International was able to provide documentation for the awards.