About

Chef Nomi's name originates from a Hearthstone legendary neutral minion card named 'Chef Nomi', which displays the exact photo the developer uses in their Twitter profile.^[1]

Little is known about the developer and creator of SuhiSwap. Their accounts were only created around the same time SushiSwap was launched.^[3]

Controversy

Around September of 2020, Chef Nomi acquired $27 million in SUSHI tokens, SushiSwaps token. The amount being held was a cause for concern among many in the DeFi (Decentralized Finance) space, as many were wondering why the creator had access to such a grand amount. They stated that this amount was for devshare.^[2]

Within the days that followed, SUSHI coin saw a loss in price per token, as Chef Nomi had sold off around $13 million in dev funds. Many were fearing that this was part of an exit scam.^[3]

After SushiSwap founder Chef Nomi confronted unusual criticism from the DeFi sector, he left the project by transferring the control to Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX.

Additionally, many people in the industry were critical of the leaders actions. Arthur Hayes, CEO of Bit MEX, stated,

Please save me from a bad $SUSHI investment SBF. He is our new master chef.

On September 11, 2020, in what many found to be surprising, Chef Nomi returned $14 million (in funds) to the SushiSwap community. In addition to the return, they apologized to the community, and explained in a statement,

I have returned all the $14M worth of ETH back to the treasury. And I will let the community decide how much I deserve as the original creator of SushiSwap. In any currency (ETH/SUSHI/etc). With any lockup schedule you wish.

“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.”

They added that they will continue to work on the project 'behind the scenes.'^[3]