Crypto exchange gets millions after copy-paste of a rival’s code

Over the past few months, investors poured billions into hundreds of so-called decentralized-finance apps, which let users lend, borrow and trade cryptocurrencies without intermediaries like banks. Then Sushi happened.

The story of Sushi, a project that’s only a few weeks old, illustrates at once the risks of DeFi’s copy-and-paste culture and the fact that the industry isn’t as decentralized as touted. Back in August, an anonymous entity that goes by Chef Nomi copied the code of another DeFi project, Uniswap, and launched an exchange dubbed SushiSwap. The only difference was that the latter offered its own token, named Sushi, which lured hundreds of millions in user funds within days.