Band Protocol denies any role in the mysterious origins of SushiSwap

Following the sudden exit of SushiSwap’s anonymous founder, many users have begun to speculate on the identity of this controversial figure.

While some focused on the current maintainer of the project Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of FTX, others saw Band Protocol’s chief technology officer, Sorawit Suriyakarn, as the person behind this project.

The evidence cited primarily involved the Sushiswap.org domain, which is provably shown to be hosted on the same IP address as Band Protocol’s website. 

In an email conversation with Cointelegraph, CEO of Band Soravis Srinawakoon said that this evidence is misleading, and refuted all allegations that the project is behind SushiSwap.

He did concede that Suriyakarn was approached by Chef Nomi for a code review. Suriyakarn did provide such a review “to make sure no user funds will be lost,” since BAND was one of the tokens that could be used to farm SUSHI. “We naturally wanted to support such an idea because it could directly benefit BAND holders and Sushiswap was not the only project we have done such a thing,” Srinawakoon added.

He went on to explain that the IP addresses are indeed the same, because both websites are hosted on Render — a hosting service that “has been gaining in popularity.” It is true that many other completely unrelated websites are also located on the same address, which seems to reinforce the idea that this is just a coincidence.

Other supposed “evidence” included similarities in the frontend code, pointing to similar names for some style files that share a common scheme of “main-chunk.css.”

Srinawakoon said that this is simply the result of both using the React framework, a very popular frontend development tool. He stated that similar naming schemes could be found in any React app.

Finally, some pointed out that the SSL certificate for both websites was issued by the same authority, Let’s Encrypt. This is once again common, with Cointelegraph itself using the same provider. Srinawakoon concluded:

“I hope this dispels some misconceptions from some people that try to associate Band with Sushiswap. As stated in our official response, while we may have helped them in the beginning, we are not the creator of Sushiswap nor have a stake in them.”

The identity of the SushiSwap founder remains unknown, and allegations raised so far appear to fall short of convincing. In the meantime the project appears to be gradually transitioning to a new, community-led ownership model.