Fantom, Other DeFi Tokens Shaken as Top DeFi Developer Andre Cronje Quits

The well-known decentralized finance (DeFi) developer and creator of Yearn.Finance (YFI), Andre Cronje, has left the DeFi space, one of his closest collaborators has announced on Twitter. The news sent the price of several tokens of protocols Cronje had been involved in into a freefall, but some are already recovering.

The announcement that Cronje is leaving was made just yesterday and has as of Monday at 10:25 UTC sent Keep3r (KP3R) down by 16% over the past 24 hours, while Solidly (SOLID) is up 9.4% over the same time period after a strong recovery Sunday night European time.

Over the past 7 days, the two tokens remain down by 33% and 86%, respectively.

Both are projects Cronje has worked extensively on in recent months.

Meanwhile, the much larger token FTM, the native token of the Fantom blockchain that many of Cronje’s protocols was built on, has fallen 7% over the past 24 hours and 12% over the past 7 days to a price of USD 1.40 as of 10:25 UTC.

The confirmation that Cronje will be leaving the world of DeFi development did not come as a complete surprise to those who have been paying attention.

Just last week, Cronje updated his LinkedIn profile to show that he no longer works as a technical advisor for the Fantom Foundation. His profile now also indicates that he stopped working as a freelance DeFi developer as of February 2022.

In addition to updating his LinkedIn details, Cronje has deleted his Twitter account.

The announcement that Cronje is leaving DeFi behind was made by Anton Nell, who worked closely together with Cronje on several DeFi projects – and who is also leaving the space.

“Unlike previous ‘building in defi sucks’ rage quits, this is not a knee jerk reaction to the hate received from releasing a project, but a decision that has been coming for a while now. Thank you to everyone that supported us over the past few years,” Nell added in a follow-up tweet.

Leading members of the crypto and DeFi community, such as Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, reacted to the news by saying that it “doesn’t matter.”

Worth noting is that this is not the first time Cronje disappears temporarily from this space. He had previously taken months off from his involvement in DeFi. In 2020, he said he quit both YFI and DeFi in general after being frustrated with the community, according to multiple reports.

Cronje first became known as the creator of Yearn.Finance, one of the original DeFi protocols in the space built on Ethereum (ETH). He later got involved in a number of other projects on the Fantom blockchain. Anton Nell was his partner and a senior solutions architect at the Fantom Foundation.

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Learn more:
– YFI Rallies 80% in a Week as Team Promises ‘Aggressive Buybacks’
– yearn.finance Goes Multichain

– Rise of YFI & Woofy May Be a Bellwether for Rotation From Ethereum To DeFi
– DeFi Darling YFI is More Expensive than Bitcoin Yet Again