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Sushi on Solana
Recorded: Feb. 10, 2026 Duration: 0:33:30Space Recording
Short Summary
SushiSwap is making waves in the DeFi space with its recent partnership with Jupiter Ultra and the launch of its services on the Solana network. With a focus on user growth and innovative liquidity solutions, SushiSwap aims to solidify its position in the competitive landscape while continuing its legacy of rewarding liquidity providers.
Full Transcription
Music Thank you. you Thank you. Alex, are you able to speak?
Hey, yeah, can you hear me?
Yes, I can.
All right, all right, all right.
I was just checking if the mic was working as well, but it looks like we're good. GM, GM, everyone, welcome to the Solana space. Sorry,
had a little bit of a technical difficulties there, but we got a massive, massive space up
ahead. Really excited to get SushiSwap here and talk a little bit about coming to Solana. What
does that mean? If you've been in the DeFi space for any amount of time, you know Sushi, one of the OGs.
They're expanding to Solana.
And yesterday they made a massive announcement by partnering up with Jupiter Ultra.
And well, here to talk about it, further ado, Alex McCurry, who just became CEO as well.
So congrats and welcome, Alex.
Thanks, guys.
Yeah, we're super excited to be doing this.
Yeah, look, Alex, man, there's such a pattern in tech where the second CEO inherits all the infrastructure, brand recognition, and their job is to execute and scale and not have to go through the invention. You look at like Tim Cook, not having to invent
the iPhone, the Della with Azur. And, you know, they took these, they took these rails and they
built what is today. And I'm really excited to see what you guys are going to cook right now
with sushi. But I have to go right into the first question and ask you why sushi? now tell us what the last two months look like for you yeah I think you know
sushi isn't is an epic OG DeFi brand and I think that the interest for me was really in taking this
OG DeFi brand and trying to meet the crypto community the crypto Twitter community, meet our users where they are fundamentally.
And I think that just, to me, that's just creating the ultimate on-chain trading experience
and making as many assets available as possible.
So Solana has been the dominant network, I would say, in terms of permissionless markets,
right, with meme coins, but also with
institutional assets and all these different things. And I think that, you know, having
the opportunity for our existing users and also for the Salon ecosystem to use sushi and its
products and tools, I think is a huge opportunity. So yeah, I mean, I think it's massive.
That's the vision really.
Yeah. And for those that haven't followed the sushi journey,
maybe give us like a 60 second version of where sushi is today,
you know, massive OG in the space, but where are you guys today?
Yeah. So sushi is is today, you know, massive OG in the space, but where are you guys today?
Yeah, so Sushi is an interesting position because, you know, it honestly has a ton of really great fundamentals going for it that have been developed over the last four years. So
the, you know, Sushi, I would say over the last couple years, Jared Gray was the last CEO.
And I think Jared honestly did a very good job stewarding the protocol and, you know, building out some good fundamentals on the commercial side.
So Sushi's aggregator and, you know, API business is one of the most distributed aggregators in the whole space. We have a bunch of really meaningful integrations and do
a massive amount of volume through a route processor, which is our EVM aggregator. And so
it's interesting because you have this really strong aggregator business, but you also have
this really strong consumer base of about 4 million individual swappers per year that use the swap.
And I would say that the focus has been more on the commercial side and more on supporting
networks and getting the aggregator distributed and less so on the consumer side.
And so that's where my focus really is. I think Sushi is just an epic brand on the consumer side of things.
And really just trying to make the swap as distributed and available as possible for consumer users on the front end.
And to have access to the core networks, the core features that, you know, people are using. Like people want to trade meme coins.
People want access to Solana.
People want perps.
People want, you know, this is just what users want.
And there's going to be an evolution of what users want in the future.
And so, you know, having, you know, having like a really strong product vision around
that I think is super crucial.
So that's kind of the, you know, the landscape.
But the fundamentals of the business are super solid.
So I think it's just about like reinvigorating the community,
reinvigorating that like consumer swap product.
You know, that's where our focus is right now.
Yeah, and I think like maybe tell us a little further, maybe that the vision,
the product vision is there. We understand and see that and really excited to see it be unveiled.
And I think maybe even announcing that, you know, we could start using Solana as of today.
Is that true?
Yeah, you can go to sushi.com. You can click the network selector and choose Solana as of today. Is that true? Yeah, you can, you can go to sushi.com. You can click
the network selector and choose Solana and you can, you can swap right now. So you can, yeah.
Yeah. What's the message there you want to send? Do we, to those that are coming back and listening
to Sushi right there, knowing what the timeline is coming for what you guys are building,
just hearing a little bit about the product vision.
What kind of incentives do you see for salon LPs?
What do you want people to expect as you kind of carry the next vision forward?
Yeah, I think, so we're definitely thinking about incentives.
We're definitely thinking about incentives. We're definitely thinking about rewards.
We have, you know, Sushi is kind of the pioneer of incentives and token rewards.
I want to say in its lifetime, it's admitted, you know, over a billion dollars of token incentives to LPs.
And so, you know, I think that, you know, obviously farming is something that people associate with Sushi. and it's something that we'll have, you know, that we'll roll out on Solana.
So we'll have pools coming in the next few weeks and we'll have some farms stood up and some interesting rewards programs.
We want to gamify things a little bit for sure.
So, you know, we have some ideas there.
So trying to find ways to incentivize the activity that builds on our flywheels to where we can, you know, build, you know, maybe we incentivize liquidity, but we incentivize it in a way that builds protocol and liquidity, right?
that builds protocol and liquidity right so that long term uh when you either have to taper down
emissions or when emissions stop there there is liquidity on on core pairs so you know we we have
a ton of incentives and rewards that we're thinking about doing and rolling out but we're trying to do
it the right way so it's sustainable and not just a you know spray and pray kind of down only model,
right, from a tokenomics standpoint.
Yeah, and I think like we've seen PancakeSwap,
Uniswap come to Solana in 2025.
What do you think you're looking to do differently
since you've seen these players come to Solana
and knowing what you know now
and seeing where the vision is, seeing where the market is
and understanding the audience and the consumer that you mentioned before, how important it is to make sure you understand what the consumer wants and what do they want to do?
Yeah, I mean, I think it's all about embracing community for us and embracing the projects that want to build.
So we want to make it as easy as
possible, but we also want to reward our users and the communities that are building on Sushi. So
whether that's a meme coin or whether that's an institutional partner that wants support going
to market. And I think that we want to take just a stance of being very helpful and very supportive of the projects that want to build with us and kind of build on our infrastructure. That's really like the core, core focus, I would
say. Yeah. And you mentioned in a tweet just recently too, right? And the one that you wrote
this thread of not getting to Solana sooner was an oversight, you know, and you mentioned a little
bit about the vision here, right? And talking about that as a leader, as the now CEO of SushiSwap,
what is now the like four priorities that you kind of have identified of this protocol on
liquidity? What does that mean in practice? Maybe walk us through a little bit of that journey yeah i i think you know i think like i said i think the the top priority for us is is
meeting our users where they are that's number one so i think solano is just a very kind of automatic
decision because it's it's where you, it's really like what the majority
of this last cycle has been driven by Solana and Solana memes and just projects built within
the ecosystem. And so I think that that's where just a ton of users are and we want to build
within the ecosystem. And it starts out with just like making swaps
available making pools available the simple stuff but then you know we build towards a roadmap where
we can innovate within the ecosystem right but but number one is just like make sure that people can
do the basic functions that they want to from a swap standpoint in terms of our priorities i think
it's like i said we're very fundamentals. So we're thinking all about like,
how do we grow users? How do we get more swaps happening on the front end? How do we get deeper
liquidity on the AMM? How do we generate more fees, more protocol fees? And ultimately, you know,
how can we just gain market share, right? So we're very like fundamentals driven. We're very,
you know, revenue driven, frankly, because we know that if we can generate revenue
and we can be profitable, we can reinvest into products and marketing and just growing
market share.
So that's really like the fundamental focus for us.
Yeah.
And look, I think, you know, you're Forbes 30 under 30.
You've built eight figure software companies in the past.
You know, I think that you're coming into to where Sushi is today and, you know, markets very challenging and everything.
And I think it's really cool to hear just kind of what your fundamentals are.
And it's so important to stay true to fundamentals because of all the noise.
What's one take there from a leadership standpoint, building what you've built
in the past, being, being who you are today.
What is one thing that you definitely want to bring to sushi?
Yeah.
I mean, I think the fundamentals are the only thing that, that ultimately matters.
Right.
I, you know, if, if your business model is dependent on the direction
that the market is going, you don't really have a business model.
Right.
So the focus for sushi is like. You don't really have a business model, right? So the focus for Sushi is like,
how do we capture market share?
How do we generate, you know,
obviously there will be less swap volume
if you're a swap, if the market is bad.
But how do we gain enough market share
and provide good enough products
that enough of our users, right,
when the market is bad or coming back and that there's just good enough
utility and functionality of the, of the core application that, that people
want to come back.
Right.
And, and that we can kind of grow throughout those periods.
And then when the market's really good, it's about capitalizing on that moment
and consolidating your advantage.
So, you know, I'm kind of excited that we have this moment to build when stuff's not super hot.
Because I know for a fact that, you know, when the market is good, we will capitalize on it and
we'll consolidate our advantage. So for me, I think, you know, we're, we're focused on what we can control and, and, and
what, what, what we think we can do well.
Um, you know, I, I have a, like a marketing and finance background and built, built companies.
And some of the guys I brought in from my team are also have that, you know, that, that
marketing background.
And like I said, Sushi has been really focused on the, on the kind of B2C API business for the
last couple of years. So this is going to be about kind of rebuilding the
community, getting people excited about what we're doing, um, getting alignment
with, with, with our community and with our users. Uh, I, I, that, I, I absolutely
love that, that you're looking at rebuilding the community and with our users. I absolutely love that you're looking at
rebuilding the community and even furthermore,
going deep dive into what the community
and the ecosystem look like.
And I think you've mentioned Penguin in the past,
you on your Twitter account posted
with Mayor Francis Soares,
what's actually happening with ecosystems and partnerships?
Maybe just walk us through some of these steps that you have right now.
And what's in the cooker right now?
Yeah.
I mean, those are two completely different things.
I think with Penguin, it's just, you know, it's funny.
It's a meme.
It's like, you know, projects should, you know, especially sushi, you're a trading venue.
Like, you're basically a trading trading application trading venue for these tokens. And a lot of these tokens are driven by culture and by what's going on. So, you know, we want to have, you know, we want to be aligning with those projects, we to be um supporting them how we can and we want like users
want access to to these things they want these projects to to like succeed and get support and
it it like it moves the needle for them it's exciting for them right so i think it's you know
part of part of what what we'll try to do is support the support what projects we can regardless of like whether it's it's a meme coin or you know an institutional
type type partner with the mayor we we we met up with the mayor last week in Miami we shot a
podcast them just kind of talking about tech and business and sort of just the future of
you know we talked a lot about like regulatory
landscape and different things. And we'll be doing a series of, you know, videos, we have,
we have some YouTube videos out that we're going to be putting out, kind of documenting,
like a building in public journey of us building sushi, basically. So we've got some videos in the in the
cooker and then we've got a you know what some cool conversations and
podcasts with with different you know thought leaders and interesting people
and and just like try to have conversations you know that that's
that's really the goal is like have interesting conversations with
interesting people put them out here on Twitter, put them on YouTube and, and, uh, yeah.
From, from all these interesting conversations that you're having, you know,
of course with mayor and, and you know, there's, there's of course the political
landscape and everything.
What do you think still is something that you are trying to achieve to help.
Again, consumers and being able to use SushiSwap from the conversations that when
you are introducing them into crypto or blockchain, how did those conversations evolve for you
and what do you see best ways to be able to have more adoption happening with SushiSwap?
Yeah, I mean, I think the, you know, I think that it's important that if you're a leader of a DeFi company, a lot of the DeFi startups and companies over the last few years have been run by people who are anonymous, basically, right? regulatory landscape where it just, I think it moves the needle. You know, you see it with,
with a bunch of the big network founders and you see it with Brian Armstrong and you see it with
like Luca Nets from Pudgy, right. Um, having these different conversations with these political
figures. And I think it's really important if you're running a DeFi protocol, if you're running
a startup in the space and you have the opportunity to talk to these people to like go speak in person get face time with them let people know
that there are real people behind these companies americans behind these companies right that are
that are trying to build value in the united states and trying to do things in a compliant
way and trying to do things the right way. So I think that it's really important to,
you know, to just like to show face basically, right. And have these conversations, like give
that, you know, give insights where you can, and then also understand where, where they're coming
from, because, you know, this, this space is the rules for this space are being written
as we speak. Right. So if we can move the needle in a, in a positive way, it's, uh, it's crucial.
Is there a common question or common concern that you've seen across all your conversations of
maybe them not understanding crypto or blockchain or why even SushiSwap needs to exist? Like,
tell me a little bit about that.
a little bit about that? You know, I think I would say, I would say that honestly,
there isn't a common question. You know, a lot of the conversations are just focused around
really like, I think there are some good, some good leaders. I'll say, I would say like Mayor
Suarez was kind of one of the first conversations I i had like this and he's very innovation forward he's very innovation oriented so i think his
you know what they're what they're trying to say is listen let's let's create a framework where we
can protect consumers right but not restrict innovation and i think that you know it's it's
all like comes down to the details but if we can have those conversations
and say listen this is how we think things should work maybe that's not how they'll end up being
written but at least you can have a little bit of uh of input right and like get thoughts
circulating get the right types of thoughts circulating also because you know these
politicians are thinking about a million different issues
right and they kind of go one inch deep in a mile wide because they have to cover all these
different issues that that people are concerned with and that you know is being brought to them
so you know trying to like yeah trying to just give input is is pretty important i think yeah
but i haven't done a lot of it. I'm just getting started.
Yeah.
Is there a little bit of alpha there that you could share
on who's the upcoming people on your show
and who are you talking to that we should expect
besides Mayor Francis Warris?
I don't know.
I mean, we're trying to get stuff set up,
so we'll see.
Maybe we'll see. Maybe we do something with some Solana peeps.
Well, there you go. And for anybody that's listening that wants to maybe set up some time with Alex, this is your time. Send them a DM, send them a message.
Yeah. We're down to chat with anyone. We just want to like, yeah, I mean, if it's an interesting conversation, we'll, we, we want to do it. You know, that's part of our
strategy, right? It's like, we're just, we want to engage the community. We want to put out cool
stuff and we want to, um, build good products. Yeah. I, that's what I truly love about you so
far. It's that you're, you're really here to, to like engage in the community and listen to
everybody. And just hearing you even say that you're, you're like engage in the community and listen to everybody and just hearing you even say
that you wanna talk to everyone.
That means a lot, especially in today's space
because I think that, you know,
the building in the public and everything
that some of the ethos and stuff of building
in Web3 and blockchain has, you know, been good and bad.
And I think, you know, going back to some of the root stuff
that we are all here for is crucial
so that we can figure out
how to move the space forward. So it's really cool to hear you say that. Let me ask you,
is there a checklist or a list that would be on the whiteboard right now for ecosystems or
partners that you're looking to either work with, especially if you're building on Solana now?
Yeah, I think, you know, I think we're, we're looking at a bunch of different partners
right now and trying to think about what, you know, what features are going to be the most
useful for our ecosystem. So we started out with with partnering with Jupiter, which which has
been a great start. And, you know, hopefully, we'll be able to do deeper, more interesting
things with Jupiter over time. But we've we. But we've got other partners in the ecosystem that we're chatting with.
And I think we want to get the core features available, particularly within the Solana ecosystem and just kind of available on Sushi.
and just kind of available on sushi. And then, and then it comes down to like,
how can we innovate maybe and build,
build a cool product or partner with, with,
with some folks to do something a little bit outside of the box.
And that's where it'll probably take a little more time to think about how we
want to do that. But yeah, I mean, we're, we're,
we're looking at a bunch of stuff right now.
Yeah. This is the first time sushi has left the EVM world.
I think it's like a bigger deal than people realize.
But what's the, like, let me ask you, like, what's the overrated feature right now in DeFi?
And what do you think is the underrated feature in DeFi?
And from you coming from an EVM world, what are you thinking?
What do you see?
I think it's interesting.
I would say, I honestly think, I think, I think most of most of DeFi is like properly
rated because people use the stuff that works.
So I think perps are obviously super like a phenomenal product, right?
And, and Hyperliquid kind of finally cracked that
in terms of on-chain liquidity and these types of things.
And I think lending is also a really good product.
There's a lot of innovation that comes in there.
But there's a lot of innovation, I think,
that is available within iterating on some of those foundations. So
in terms of cross margining, different types of collateral, you know, being able to,
yeah, being able to like cross margin, different types of collateral across different products and
just create a more seamless trading experience, I think is, I mean, it's really the fundamental
value add of, of DeFi, right, is being able to kind of validate value in one place and
permission activity in another place.
So I think that that's really the, you know, what we're looking at a little bit is kind
of ways that we can innovate on that.
I think DeFi is an interesting place.
A couple of really good products, DEXs, lending markets, perps have found product market fit and launch pads, obviously.
And then it just comes down to how can you innovate on that?
comes down to how can you innovate on that? I think a lot of what we're thinking about is
how do you create sort of the ultimate on-chain trading experience in terms of,
you know, I had an interesting conversation with a buddy of mine who was talking to me about how
he's trading metals, right? And he's doing these trades where he will maybe buy an interest in a
Brazilian mining company that's mining gold or silver that's undervalued relative to the
market because gold and silver are ripping. And he's like, this is super difficult to do because
you have to set up a brokerage account somewhere where you can access this like Brazilian stock or, you know, a derivative of this Brazilian stock.
And so this is like really complicated in TradFi.
either like a way to permissionlessly spin up markets or a more seamless way to create
markets for these things and just to be able to trade them instantly from one place, right?
From one terminal where you can access essentially an unlimited amount of liquidity for an unlimited
amount of assets, right? So I think that's the, or at least, you know, the maximum amount of
liquidity for an unlimited amount of assets, right? And so I think that's the most interesting use case for DeFi
is this type of a world in the future.
And so we're thinking a lot about these kinds of use cases internally for sure.
And yeah, I mean, that's a big focus too for us.
Yeah. Look, and I think, you know, we just hit a record high of 959 million weekly transactions.
That was pretty big headline for us in the past day. And you're talking here a little bit about
how you're looking at this. Was there something as well, like that you're looking forward to
by building on Solana? Do you
see something on Solana as well as we talk about DeFi that really excites you and that you see
a vision that allows SushiSwap to be able to flourish?
Yeah, I mean, I also have a super, you know, I think the PMM environment is super interesting.
There's just things that you can do on Solana that you can't do on other
networks in terms of, um, you know, the, obviously, you know, humidify has been
super successful and, and this sort of PMM, uh, this, you know, this way of
kind of just improving liquidity and price on chain by unifying, uh,
this like off-chain aspect so i think i think that's like a super interesting angle especially if as you know sushi is an aggregator we're not deployed
on salon yet but but we we plan to to deploy to deploy on salon in the future and i think if
you're you know if you're an aggregator
and you're trying to figure out the way to get the best price
so you can be as competitive as possible,
these kinds of solutions are really, really interesting.
So, yeah, I mean, that's, I think that's one of the most interesting innovations,
actually, that Solana has provided these pmms no totally
i think that it's it's really getting exciting as we're seeing products um mature and and now
the product market fit is is there and the maturity there and uh it just drives us to to be able to
have a clearer future and i think you know with the turmoil and and all the stuff that's happening
on next sometimes we forget about you know, what truly that goal is.
And it's really exciting to just see, you know, the products that are finally here and
the products that are working.
Look, you know, I think we're coming around like the 33-minute market.
So I'm sorry that I'm going to keep you over.
But, you know, what's the one thing you want everyone today listening to take away from
everyone today listening to take away from sushi swap building on Solana.
SushiSwap building on Solana?
Yeah. I mean, I would say, you know, hopefully you stay engaged,
keep an eye on what we're doing. Uh, use sushi.
Let me know if you have feedback. Um, you know, I, I, uh,
I was like answering support tickets basically on X last like yesterday.
Um, so we're, we're, we're we're here you know we're listening and we yeah we've got a lot of cool stuff coming so we'll just let the that stuff
speak for itself but yeah excited to be on Solana and excited for what we can do in the future yeah
and look man where do we make sure
that we turn our notifications on yeah we got the sushi swap account here uh make sure you guys go
give them a follow again completely free to follow so give them a follow of course alex
here as well alex uh you know what's the plug there yeah just here on here on here on x you'll you'll you'll see you'll see everything we'll put stuff
out so we'll have uh we got some i think we have a video coming this week so we might i think we
have a building a public vlog coming this week and then we'll have the uh the the podcast coming
the next in the next like two weeks or so so we'll we'll be dropping that all on x we'll drop
it on youtube too but um yeah it'll be here here on X excited for to watch those listen to those and really excited to see your
journey and and you know congrats on everything that you got been
accomplished and welcome to Solana Alex last thing is there anything I think I
should have asked you that we should all know about man I don't uh I don't know I think I think I think we uh you know I was just super
excited to to be in the ecosystem and um it's funny like we started tweet you know we tweeted
it uh about about the Solana launch then all these meme coin projects and all these projects came in
and uh started like blowing up the replies I just i just love it like i love all the the
community oriented stuff so i love you know the memes you know i've been in the trenches a good
bit personally so i don't know i'm just excited to to to be building with you guys and and you
know let's see what let's see what we can do yeah not, not financial advice. I saw you with some of your tweets.
So I've been following.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, don't buy what I buy.
But I'll buy stuff just because it's, you know, if I see people like using sushi in the community or something and they, whatever, you know.
Yeah, well.
A ride for the for the crew I
love that you're having fun already and love love to see you guys here building
on Solana really excited for again the journey and looking to see you ahead for
the next 12 months and Alex maybe in 12 months we run it back to do a flashback
of where we are today versus where we are in 12 months and just listen to more
of what the growth is and what 2026 is going to keep
building for you guys.
Yeah, man, let's do it.
I appreciate it.
Thanks, Jorge.
Thanks, Alex.
Thank you for your time.
Doing this.
Yeah, thanks, everybody.
And for those that were listening, don't forget, you know, go to SushiSwap, give them
a follow, drop a comment, hit that like, and please share the awareness because we're
all here building and it's a great time to be building on Solana.
Thank you, everyone.
Thanks, guys.
Host
Sushi.com
from
Sushi Aptos
