Sushi BentoBox & Kashi: The First Piece

After roaring onto the scene in headline-grabbing fashion back in late August, SushiSwap has since established itself as a leading DeFi project. It is among the leading DEXs by volume and TVL. Their success can be largely attributed to their rapid innovation, a strong grassroots community and a strategy that is increasingly differentiated from Uniswap (more on this later).

SushiSwap's newly released BentoBox vault along with Kashi Lending, the first Dapp enabled by BentoBox, is the result of an aggressive strategy to expand beyond being just a decentralized exchange. Originally proposed as a single lending solution back in September, BentoBox has since morphed into two distinct products, with the original idea becoming a small part of a broader ecosystem that the SushiSwap developers hope to enable with BentoBox.

What Is BentoBox?

BentoBox, at its core, is simply a single vault that holds all of the assets deposited by users and makes them accessible to be utilized by any DApp built off of it.

There are many quantifiable advantages of this setup for all parties involved. For end users, having assets stored in one central underlying vault enables more efficient token transfers, lowering transaction complexity and gas fees. Furthermore, tokens only need to be approved once to be used on any protocol within BentoBox, allowing users to save on tedious token approval fees that can add up over time (users must still approve each particular protocol to use their funds; however, this process takes 1-click and is completely gasless). With users only needing to pay approval transaction fees once, it is likely users may keep their assets within BentoBox due to convenience, helping SushiSwap keep users within its DApp ecosystem. This advantage cannot be overstated given the explosion in fees on Ethereum over the last couple of months, and the reality of Layer 2 solutions still months away.