SushiSwap’s SUSHI Token Surges Amid Bentobox Launch Announcement

One of the most controversial lending protocols in the DeFi space, SushiSwap, drew the attention of the DeFi community with the introduction of BentoBox vault.

Originally, BentoBox was intended for usage in the lending functionality of SushiSwap, but the idea quickly evolved into a solution for a problem that most of the DeFi protocols continue to experience – keeping tokens within smart contracts. 

In swapping pairs on SushiSwap the underlying assets are held in the corresponding smart contract for the specific pair. 

“This is where the BentoBox comes in. The BentoBox is a single vault that holds all tokens. Not just for the lending contracts, but also for any other protocols and future extensions. Anyone can build extensions that use the BentoBox as their vault with these benefits,” BoringCrypto wrote in a blog post.

The blog post emphasized that once a given token is approved for the vault, every protocol built on top of BentoBox would require “no token approval anymore,” which enhances the functionalities and takes off the burden from smart contracts.

Furthermore, the new BentoBox update would utilize several oracle services, like SushiSwap’s TWAP (Time Weighted Average Price), Compound’s Open Price Feed, and Chainlink’s public oracles.

This is yet another protocol update for SushiSwap – a hard fork of the original UniSwap DeFi platform. SushiSwap became notorious with the massive price increase of its native SUSHI governance token, which fueled the DeFi frenzy in the late-summer 2020. 

However, SushiSwap made a huge difference from its original, by adding staking and governance token in the mix. Governance token holders have the ability to vote on protocol proposals, which may turn pivotal for the future of the platform. The staking mechanism allows users to stake tokens, providing liquidity for the lending platform. Users receive interest for the number of tokens they staked into the “liquidity pools.”

Meanwhile, a more-global change may be happening in the DeFi ecosystem, as the 2020 summer DeFi craze has gone away and now projects are making gains without much of last year’s hype. For instance, SushiSwap is on a continuous rise in total value locked (TVL) from its plateau in November 2020. 

Source: DeFi Pulse

From its low point of around $250 million in November 2020, SushiSwap surpassed the $2 billion TVL mark and reached $2,2 billion as of press time. The SUSHI token also received a fresh wave of interest, jumping from a price point of around $2,9 in the last days of 2020, to trade at $8.03 as of press time, which is a 276% price increase.

The total value locked in DeFi projects is also increasing, from $10 billion in September 2020, to over $26 billion as of press time.