Sushi Quick Start Guide
Get a brief overview of Sushi and learn to harness everything it has to offer!
- Date
- 0xGenghisGoose
This article is meant to act as a tutorial for new Sushi users or for people who are in the process of discovering the benefits of DeFi altogether.
First of all, welcome! We are excited that you are looking into Sushi and are confident that our suite of services will help empower you to harness the abundance of opportunities that arise in the space daily. Here, we mean to walk through the main tenets of our protocol and give you a solid overview of the ecosystem, as well as provide resources to dive deeper afterwards - let’s begin!
What Is The Purpose Of Sushi?
Sushi is a decentralized exchange (commonly known as a DEX) - an avenue for users to swap cryptocurrency assets without any need for a trusted intermediary or a personal background or credit check. Compared to centralized exchanges (a CEX), DEXs generally offer a wider range of assets to be swapped, faster and with less fees (so, cheaper); Sushi is no different.
Sushi also has the added bonus of being the most widespread DEX of them all, currently deployed on 24 chains with even more on the way. This means that users can utilize Sushi on just about any established chain imaginable, friction-free - it looks and works the exact same across all of the chains. Having options is powerful, and here at Sushi we want to open the door to anyone and everyone (from everywhere!) that would like to be a part of DeFi.
How To Start Using Sushi
To begin interfacing with Sushi products (or any protocol for that matter), users first must have a wallet to hold their cryptocurrencies in. For the uninitiated, think of your wallet as the password-protected account to your favorite site; wallets not only store your crypto assets but also serve as your identity on the blockchain, allowing you to discreetly sign messages and transactions and prove your identity, without ever having to take a photo or fill out a form! To begin using Sushi and playing around with its different features, one must have a wallet and connect it to the site via the Connect Wallet button in the top right corner of the screen. Some common wallet providers to look into are:
Note: Your wallet will need to be connected to the Sushi app to utilize it; for the rest of this article, it is assumed that your wallet is connected - though it’s always an excellent idea to double check!
Overview Of Swaps
First things first, our bread and butter - let’s learn about making swaps! As mentioned previously, Sushi offers a vast amount of cryptocurrencies that can be swapped with each other quickly and efficiently. Sushi utilizes an Automated Market Maker (AMM) model, which means that instead of relying on an order book with buyer and sellers on each side like a traditional exchange, Sushi automatically facilitates trades by drawing on liquidity that is voluntarily provided to them by other users for additional yield (more on this later). This automatic model enables them to make swaps fast, and at optimal execution prices.
To make a swap, head over to the Sushi app where the swap interface is the default page. Here, you will see a figure similar to the picture above - this is where you can plug in the assets that you want to trade and make it happen. Select the asset you’d like to swap from the dropdown menu next to the asset on the top. Then, select the asset you’d like to swap for using the dropdown menu next to the asset on the bottom. Select Swap, confirm the transaction in your wallet, and then either wait the estimated amount of time or track the transaction’s progress yourself with a block explorer such as Etherscan (if on Ethereum Mainnet).
Note: If it is your first time making a swap, you might need to “Approve” the assets in the transaction before the actual swap is made - just follow the prompts from your wallet for guidance.
Your wallet will notify you when the swap is complete!
Canceling / Reversing A Trade
Due to the nature of blockchains and cryptocurrencies themselves, once a swap is executed there is no way to cancel or reverse it - that is, once your wallet or the block explorer tells you the swap is finalized, it is done. If the swap happens to still be pending when you decide you want to cancel it, it is possible to request to cancel the transaction in your wallet. However, you will need to move fast and there will be an extra gas fee incurred to cancel the transaction.
Can I Trade From One Chain To Another?
Yes! With SushiXSwap, users can easily transfer assets across a large number of supported chains by simply selecting xSwap in the swap window (it can be seen in the picture above) and inputting the correct information. If you’d like to see a step-by-step walkthrough on the process, please check out our Sushi Academy article on it here.
My Transaction Is Taking A While - Should I Be Worried?
Sometimes, transactions can be pending for a long time which can induce worry and panic. If this happens to you, it is more than likely that the processing speed you originally chose to execute the transaction (or the default speed chosen by your wallet) was too slow. In this case, it is recommended that you cancel the transaction in your wallet and execute it again, this time increasing the processing speed (select Edit in the swap confirmation pop-up from your wallet) used - keep in mind, faster processing speeds means higher gas prices!
What Else Can I Do On Sushi?
This is a great question! The short answer is many, many things - let’s discuss a few in further detail.
Liquidity Provision
As previously mentioned, Sushi employs a decentralized AMM model that relies on liquidity provided by users to facilitate swaps, as opposed to the traditional order book model. Users provide liquidity to the protocol in the form of depositing a given pair of assets into a liquidity pool, which is then drawn upon to make low-slippage swaps when another user is looking to trade for one of the assets in the pool.
Users that provide liquidity in this way are aptly known as Liquidity Providers (LPs) and are incentivized to lend out their money by accruing extra yield on their position. An LP receives an SLP (Sushi Liquidity Provider) token in exchange for their provided liquidity, with the amount of SLPs received proportional to the amount they originally provided (or “staked” in crypto nomenclature). A 0.25% fee is charged on all trades of the respective token pair which goes directly to LPs - this is where the additional yield comes from. LPs can withdraw their funds at any time by swapping their SLPs for their initial deposit plus any yield on top that they have accrued.
To learn more about the process of providing liquidity, please refer to our walkthrough of an example on Sushi Academy here.
Farming
Farming goes hand in hand with LPs and the SLPs they receive. Similar to how LPs stake their liquidity and earn rewards, farming is a way for Sushi to attract and incentivize liquidity even further by allowing LPs to then stake their SLPs for even more yield - paid out in Sushi’s native token, $SUSHI. The $SUSHI rewards have no lockup or vesting period, so they can either be immediately cycled back into the protocol for more profits, held on to as a spot (and governance) play, or sold for more realized gains.
Additionally, Sushi has a handful of special farms known as Onsen: these farms pay out in two assets, instead of solely $SUSHI rewards, and are designed as a liquidity provision system for relatively new projects. The Onsen menu is a constantly evolving list of exciting projects, so be sure to check it out often along with the other farms to stay on top of the highest APRs!
Token Streaming
One of the most exciting products in the Sushi suite is Furo: a simple and intuitive way of automating payrolls, salaries, side gigs, DAO contributors, you name it. Users looking to set up a stream simply need to head to the app from the main site, fill out the required fields (including wallet addresses, payment token and schedule) and boom - just like that, the stream is set and will automatically execute the payments to your specifications. Of course, the streams are always editable and can be tweaked or canceled at any time. Additionally, because Furo is built upon Sushi’s underlying token vault, BentoBox, funds deposited for the stream will also automatically accrue additional yield on top via low-risk strategies with dormant funds, increasing capital efficiency and, more importantly, increasing the yield for the users.
We hope that this piece was informative and has piqued your interest in Sushi! We are always available via Discord or Twitter and are happy to answer any questions you may have or discuss certain products in more detail. Come join us!
For additional resources into what Sushi has to offer and how our products work, please consider visiting the Sushi Academy, where we have tons of content spanning from deeper dives on Sushi products to important DeFi concepts to know, or our documentation for the more technical content and the developers out there.