Andre Cronje, a well-known developer, has left decentralized finance, according to a declaration made today by his colleague Anton Nell, a senior solutions architect at the Fantom Foundation, who is following in his footsteps without elaborating.
On the announcement that prolific developer Andre Cronje is putting it quits, values for dozens of tokens are plummeting, including those with just shaky ties to the DeFi maven.
Cryptocurrencies linked to Cronje’s projects, such as FTM and YFI, plummeted after the surprise revelation, with yearn.finance (YFI) down 13% from nearly $20,000 to $17,000.
Fantom (FTM) was trading at $1.42 as of this writing, down 15% in the last 24 hours.
Solidly (SOLID), which only began trading last week, has dropped 64.73% in the previous day, and is now worth $1.13.”
Andre and I have decided to put the chapter on contributing [sic] to the defi/crypto field to a close.
On April 3, 2022, we will be eliminating approximately 25 apps and services,”
Anton Nell, Tweeter Cronje removed his Twitter account and modified his Linkedin to reflect that he was no longer an advisor to the Fantom Foundation last week, leading many to believe that an announcement was on the way.
The market has responded fiercely to the news, despite the warning indicators.
Yearn.fi, keep3r.network, multichain.xyz, chainlist.org, solidly.exchange, and bribe.crv.finance are among the applications—or websites that serve as DeFi protocol front-ends—that Cronje and Nell will phase down.
Cronje and Nell did not respond to Decrypt’s requests for comment right away.
yearn.finance (YFI) and Fantom (FTM) take a nosedive
Some contributors to Cronje-related projects were taken aback by the market’s reaction to the news.
“People burying YFI, you do realize Andre hasn’t worked on it in over a year?”
And even if he did, there are 50 full-time employees and 140 part-time employees to back him up,” yearn developer banteg tweeted.
Financial apps that employ blockchains such as Ethereum for banking services are referred to as DeFi.
DeFi applications are developed on top of blockchain-based smart contracts, which are not permissionless nature and can continue to work even if the original developers are no longer involved.
According to James Hancock, a former Ethereum core developer, “as long as the contracts are immutable or don’t require Andre’s consent for updates, they will continue to work as deployed.”
“The webpages that plug into those contracts are being shut down by [Cronje].”
Technically, anyone can create a user interface for these services, but that does not ensure they will. You, too, require an incentive and the development of legitimacy.
“Despite the fact that DeFi is technically a trustless system, investors place their trust in the people who create the applications.
“Everybody can install a [user interface], but anyone who wants to use it must believe it is safe as well,” Hancock stressed.
According to data from DefiLlama, Fantom usurped Binance Smart Chain (BSC) in late January and became the third-largest chain with over $12.2 billion in total value locked (TVL) throughout the DeFi ecosystem.
An expected snapshot of top Fantom protocols for Cronje’s new project, Solidly, accounted for the increase.
“I believe we’re seeing the final puffs of whatever narratives we were all clamoring for a few months back from a DeFi perspective.” Andre’s departure is significant.
Wassie Capital, a pseudonymous DeFi investor, said in a press conference “He’s the reason why so many projects and people went into the [Fantom] ecosystem.”
“I was fortunate in that I rotated a lot and didn’t have any large investments, but I can only image how difficult it is for individuals who had their funds locked up for several years.”
The understated announcement came as a huge disappointment to those who had invested in Cronje-related projects, and was widely compared to a rug pull, a term that used to refer to DeFi exit scams but is now used loosely to refer to any developer decision that causes related cryptocurrencies to plummet.
“In terms of communication, I’m rough.”
“We were just warned that ‘websites will be deleted,'” said miroyato, a DeFi investor and developer of the Web3 file-sharing service fileverse.io.
“However, this will be a fantastic test of DeFi open-source software’s robustness.”
Yearn and other ‘Andre projects’ have so many excellent developers contributing to it that I’m excited to see how they grow even after [the] creators have left.”
Cronje has a history of temporarily abandoning DeFi due to fury.
After Hasu, another DeFi researcher, uncovered potential red flags about yearn financing, he told Coinscreed in August 2020, “Close to furious leaving again.” “I’m sick and tired of being in this place.”
Cronje observed at the time, “It’s pointless trying to be a constructor in this space.”
“Andre enjoys constructing stuff.” Stani Kulechov, the founder of the Aave lending protocol, told Decrypt at the time, “He will always come back.” Until today, that prognosis has shown to be right.”
Unlike prior ‘building in defi stinks’ rage quits, this is not a knee-jerk reaction to the abuse received from launching a project, but a choice that has been coming for a while now,” Nell, who made the statement today, stressed.
