Sushi plans to clear the national treasury of SUSHI tokens, where is DeFi 2.0 headed?

Author: Wenser, Odaily Planet Daily

With the gradual recovery of ETH prices, the tokens in the DeFi sector have also welcomed their "surge moment." According to OKX market data, as of the time of writing, SUSHI is quoted at $2.54, with a 24-hour increase of up to 32.68%, leading the DeFi-related tokens. In addition, tokens like UNI, HYPE, and CRV have all seen a 7-day increase of over 30%, prompting the exclamation: Is DeFi 2.0 really coming?

Odaily Planet Daily will briefly analyze the subsequent direction of DeFi 2.0 in conjunction with a series of recent actions by Sushi for readers' reference.

Frequent Moves: Is Sushi Firing the "First Shot of DeFi Revival"?

In October, Sushi's official account hinted that "something big is coming." On October 21, Sushi posted "Tomorrow" in the early morning, suggesting that major news would be announced soon. At that time, the price of SUSHI had experienced a slight increase and was only $0.8318.

On the same day, Sushi CEO Jared Grey stated that "tests show that Sushi outperforms major aggregators on competing networks in key metrics such as price, gas, and latency, and the aggregation volume is steadily increasing month by month. Additionally, Sushi is about to announce a strategic acquisition that will allow it to bring built-in invisible innovative DeFi primitives into the AMM and perps vertical."

Since then, as a veteran DeFi platform, Sushi has taken the lead in firing the "first shot of DeFi revival."

Subsequently, Sushi's official account released the Super Swap roadmap, which includes:

• Multi-chain expansion: Sushi has launched on over 35 chains and will add more in the future. This extensive network ensures seamless trading between new and old ecosystems, allowing users to access through an intuitive Sushi user interface.
• Route Processor: The Route Processor provides the industry with the most decentralized cross-chain aggregation stack. By aggregating liquidity from hundreds of sources, RP 5 ensures competitive pricing and optimal trading paths for diverse assets, even on fragmented networks.
• Swap API: Powered by the Route Processor, our swap API allows partners to directly integrate Sushi's seamless swapping experience into their applications. Future updates will introduce a fee capture mechanism, opening new revenue streams for partners.
• SushiXSwap: SushiXSwap has now entered its second version, supporting cross-chain swaps across 15 networks, with plans for further expansion.
• Trader-focused features: Sushi's user experience is trader-centric, offering essential tools such as tax token support, dollar-cost averaging (DCA), limit orders, mini portfolios, and a simplified token selector.
• Blade: Blade is Sushi's upcoming AMM designed to address the impermanent loss (IL) issue for liquidity providers. With Blade, liquidity providers can expect stable returns on quality assets without worrying about the risk of impermanent loss.
• Kubo: A DeFi perpetual contract primitive aimed at enabling liquidity providers (LPs) to generate returns through delta-neutral strategies across multiple networks.
• ALM Smart Pool: Steer's smart pool simplifies V3 concentrated liquidity management with user-friendly strategies that often outperform standard LP methods.

From ecological expansion to product aggregation, from seamless integration to cross-chain swapping, and from LP risk management to LP process simplification, Sushi has begun a new round of product iteration and updates in multiple areas, hoping to attract liquidity on a larger scale and more users.

Subsequently, Sushi has integrated with ecosystems such as zkLink Nova and ApeChain, taking steps towards the planned multi-ecosystem integration.

In terms of the main theme of this cycle—Meme coins—Sushi has also provided its own "solution." On November 28, Sushi announced that the Dojo proxy and Tweet Tokens feature are now live, allowing users to tokenize their favorite posts or directly publish their created Meme coins from Twitter (i.e., the X platform). Publishing tokens from Twitter is completely free, but please note that there is a 5-minute interval between each user's token creation to avoid spam.

Thanks to a series of positive developments at the project level, the SUSHI token has also risen steadily, breaking through $1.36 in early December, an increase of over 200% compared to four months ago. A trader's address, which previously acquired 1.5 million SUSHI (approximately $2.01 million) on August 9, could not resist the idea of taking profits in the face of a 134% gain and sold it off, making a profit of $1.17 million.

If that trader had held until now, their profit would have doubled to around $2.4 million. Of course, there are no "ifs" in the market, and the recent rise of the SUSHI token is closely related to a series of positive developments and the price recovery of ETH.

On December 6, according to the Snapshot page, the Sushi community initiated a vote on the "Fiscal Diversification Proposal," with the voting deadline set for December 14 at 5 AM. Sushi CEO Jared Grey explained that currently, 100% of Sushi's treasury assets are in SUSHI tokens, and in the proposed diversification strategy, 70% of the treasury holdings will be converted to stablecoins, 20% to blue-chip assets (BTC, ETH), and the remaining 10% to DeFi tokens (e.g., AAVE). If this operation is executed, the Sushi treasury will systematically liquidate its current SUSHI holdings within the specified period to minimize market impact, implementing an average cost strategy during the sell-off and executing sales under favorable market conditions.

The goals of this proposal include:

• Reducing volatility: Decreasing the impact of SUSHI on the treasury's holding value;
• Enhancing liquidity: Increasing the liquidity of operational and strategic assets;
• Generating revenue: Exploring opportunities for staking, lending, or liquidity provision.

Currently, the proposal has received support from 774,000 SUSHI tokens, which is about 84.5% away from the required 5 million SUSHI for the proposal to meet the conditions.

On December 8, Sushi CEO Jared Grey summarized a comprehensive governance reform passed by Sushi DAO in April and released the Sushi 2025 product roadmap, which includes:

• Wara (wara.exchange): A new integrated trading experience based on Solana;
• Susa (susa.exchange): A brand new on-chain order book perpetual DEX launched by Sushi;
• Kubo (kubo.bid): A new native perpetual contract product launched by Sushi Labs, starting a new market through delta-neutral strategies;
• Blade (part of SushiSwap): A new LVR AMM solution that eliminates MEV for blue-chip assets;
• SushiSwap Aggregator: This product is already in development but will expand its distribution through the integration of new partners.

At the same time, in response to community comments, it was stated that a multi-token airdrop had already been announced in April.

Sushi Official Homepage Background Image

Thus, Sushi's ambition to make a strong push into the Solana ecosystem is evident.

In addition, the "Referral Rebate Program" launched at the end of November has also begun to show results—referrers will receive 75% of the transaction fees, while the referred users will receive the remaining 25% of the rewards, making it one of the "platforms benefiting users" initiatives.

With Sushi's actions, many crypto users have high expectations for the DeFi sector, which once led the market in the development of DeFi 2.0, and this is naturally the result of the efforts of various DeFi protocols and platforms.

How to Start DeFi 2.0? New and Old Platforms Each Have Their Tricks

According to SoSoValue data, after experiencing a sector rotation increase, the crypto market sector has seen a pullback today, with most crypto sectors experiencing a 24-hour decline of about 1.5% to 3%. Among them, the previously strong CeFi, Layer 1, AI, and PayFi sectors have seen significant pullbacks, with a 24-hour decline of about 3%. In contrast, the DeFi sector remains relatively strong, maintaining a 24-hour increase of 0.63%, with Chainlink (LINK) and Uniswap (UNI) performing well, with 24-hour increases of 6.66% and 2%, respectively.

Additionally, according to previous news from IntoTheBlock, thanks to the continued surge in DeFi and Memecoin trading, Ethereum's protocol revenue increased by nearly 40% this week, reaching around $57 million. Looking closely, the current situation of DeFi protocols and platforms is as follows:

Hyperliquid: An L1 Public Chain Driving DeFi 2.0

In a previous article titled "Single Number Average Up to $30,000, HyperLiquid Becomes the 'Largest Airdrop of the Year'?", we provided a detailed introduction to Hyperliquid, which has recently garnered significant market attention. After the article was published, the platform's token HYPE rose from $8 to nearly $14, setting a new high.

It is evident that Hyperliquid's approach of not initially launching the HYPE token on CEX has created a wave of "reverse marketing," and its positioning as an "L1 public chain" has significantly raised its project ceiling. Combined with Hyperliquid's previous moves based on community requests, such as "3x leverage to long or short HYPE" and auctioning spots for listing, the project has ambitious goals, and the token price may have further upside potential.

According to the latest statistics from Hyperliquid Hub, within 7 days, Hyperliquid achieved a daily trading volume of $10 billion; daily open contracts reached $3.5 billion; and it has over 220,000 users, showcasing impressive market performance.

Hyperliquid's Impressive Performance

Uniswap: Unichain Poised for Launch

The veteran DEX platform Uniswap is also not to be outdone. It previously announced the launch of Unichain, with analyses suggesting that Uniswap has long been a key driver of activity on the Ethereum mainnet. As Uniswap transitions to its own chain, Ethereum validators may lose approximately $400 million to $500 million in annual revenue. However, more serious than this economic loss is the threat it poses to Ethereum's fundamental narrative as a deflationary currency. Uniswap's universal router is the largest gas-consuming account, accounting for 14.5% of Ethereum's gas fees, equivalent to the destruction of $1.6 billion worth of Ethereum, which means the effectiveness of the burn mechanism will weaken, further undermining Ethereum's economic position.

In the recently concluded month of November, Uniswap's monthly trading volume reached $38 billion, nearly a 50% increase from October, breaking the previous record of $34 billion; the total monthly fee reached $5.44 million, ranking sixth among DeFi protocols; Arbitrum also became the first L2 on the Uniswap protocol with a monthly trading volume exceeding $20 billion. Recently, Uniswap Labs officially announced a partnership with digital asset operations and payment platform Fireblocks. Through Fireblocks, asset managers, hedge funds, and other financial companies can directly access Uniswap's deep liquidity and competitive prices from the platform.

Thus, Uniswap has effectively established an "institutional-level user service system."

Others: ORCA, RSR, DYDX, CRV

Among other DeFi-related tokens, ORCA, RSR, DYDX, and CRV have also performed well for various reasons:

• ORCA's price surged due to its listing on Binance;
• RSR gained market attention due to the appointment of Paul Atkins, the new chair of the U.S. SEC, as an early advisor to the project;
• DYDX remains among the industry leaders in trading volume and has previously responded quickly to market hotspots like Meme coins;
• CRV has achieved a sixfold increase over the past month after overcoming previous "liquidation turmoil."

Based on the current market performance of projects with good protocol revenue, the future of DeFi 2.0 looks promising. (For details, please refer to the article "Curve's Sixfold Increase in January: Who is the Real 'Value Coin' from the Perspective of Protocol Revenue?")

Conclusion: When DeFi Meets Meme Coins, MemeFi May Lead the Next Round of Industry Growth

As one of the popular sectors that led the market after BTC prices broke through $100,000, the DeFi track is also seeking new paths and directions in keeping up with the times. Some market views suggest that MemeFi may become the "engine" driving the next round of industry growth—combining the yield of DeFi mining with the low barriers and high-frequency operations of Meme coins to bring in more new investors and liquidity to the market. Various Meme coin projects on Hyperliquid can also be seen as new attempts in this direction.

Additionally, Meme coin project LPs have also become a popular play recently; for details, please refer to the article "The Meme Wave is Not Just PVP; 'Mining' is Also a Good Choice."

In the near future, we may also witness another "Meme coin track wealth creation star" beyond pump.fun.