Key points to remember
- Andre Cronje and Anton Nell are leaving the DeFi space.
- The pair will cede ownership or decommission the websites they control, but the protocols they built will continue to work.
- YFI, KP3R and FTM dove into the news.
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Cronje was widely considered the “godfather of DeFi” for his various contributions to the space.
André Cronje and Anton Nell bow out
The DeFi space is losing two of its most talented developers.
Andre Cronje, the so-called “DeFi architect” who rose to prominence as the founder of yield optimization protocol Yearn.Finance, is moving away from DeFi and crypto for good. Anton Nell, another builder best known for its ties to the Fantom ecosystem, will also bow out with Cronje. Nell announced the news in a tweet on Sunday. “André and I have decided to close the chapter on the contribution [sic.] to the defi/crypto space,” Nell wrote, before adding that it was “a decision that has been coming for a while now.” Nell, who has worked closely with Cronje on his various projects, explained that the pair would shut down the websites they control and move away from space.Before working on Fantom, Nell briefly reviewed ICO plans for Crypto Briefing alongside Cronje.
André and I have decided to close the chapter of the contribution to the defi/crypto space.
There are approximately 25 apps and services that we are terminating on April 3, 2022.
1/3— Anton Nell (@AntonNellCrypto) March 6, 2022
Questions about Cronje’s future in crypto began to surface this week when he deleted his Twitter account and edited his LinkedIn profile to indicate he had stopped working at Yearn.Finance, Fantom, and the broader Ethereum ecosystem. He then confirmed to the Keep3r Network community that he would be leaving the project in a Telegram message.
Cronje, who had a great impact on Crypto Briefingit’s first years as chief code reviewer prior to his various DeFi engagements, confirmed the news and reiterated that the protocols he and Nell had built would continue to work (notably, as they are deployed as immutable smart contracts, it there is no way to close them). Writing in a private message to Crypto Briefing, Cronje said they are “just transferring/disabling the domains and web apps we control, and moving away from defi/crypto.” Cronje said the couple would resume their careers in the traditional financial sector.
YFI, KP3R, FTM hit hard
Pseudonymous developer Yearn.Finance banteg weighed on the news, stating that Cronje “didn’t work on [Yearn] for over a year… And even if it did, there are 50 full-timers and 140 part-time contributors to back things up.
In the few years they have been active, Cronje and Nell have had an immeasurable impact on DeFi. Cronje has sometimes been described as a “godfather of DeFi” after popularizing the trend of yield farming as head of Yearn.Finance, which has amassed a cult following in part following the astronomical rise of the YFI token over a period that crypto diehards call it “DeFi Summer. Cronje then created a suite of popular products on Ethereum and other EVM-enabled blockchains. Cronje became famous for his “test in prod” mantra as he typically rolled out projects on blockchain before conducting audits.
More recently, Cronje had led Solidly, a new Fantom project inspired by Curve Finance’s vote-locked tokenomics and OlympusDAO’s “(3,3)” flywheel design. Solidly recently launched on Fantom and has attracted billions of dollars in cash to the network.
Reactions to the update have been mixed, although many active crypto users have expressed their thanks and support in pairs. Most of the projects they were affiliated with suffered. Yearn.Finance’s YFI is down 7.5% today, Keep3r’s KP3R is down 24.4% and even FTM is down 14.4%.
Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this article owned ETH, CRV, FTM and was exposed to YFI in a cryptocurrency index. Andre Cronje is a shareholder of Crypto Briefing and previously worked for the publication with Anton Nell.
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