The Crypto Journey of DeFi Godfather - Andre Cronje

The most talked about topic in DeFi market lately is Andre Cronje's Twitter account cancellation on February 28th and then on March 6th, Fantom's Senior Solutions Architect Anton Nell announced on Twitter that Andre Cronje and he will no longer contribute to DeFi or the Crypto. Anton Nell also said that this exit was not a whim but a consideration for long.

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Story of Andre Cronje

Andre Cronje was born in South Africa and studied law at university. By chance, he came across computer science through a friend and initially wanted to help him with a related experiment, didn't expect that it would make him interested in computers. He went on to study computer and information systems at the Computer Training Institute (CTI) and then worked as an instructor at CTI. After leaving CTI, Andre Cronje started working on technical projects, he was technical team leader at Vodacom (2006/10 - 2008/12), software architect at Full Facing (2013/08 - 2015/07), technical leader at Freedom Life (2013/11 - 2018/08) until 2018. /08), until March 2018 when he started working in the blockchain industry as a blockchain protocol consultant at BitDiem.

Wanchain

In April 2018, Andre joined CryptoCurve, responsible for the development of Wanchain, including wallet, DEX, ICO platform, smart contracts. Wanchain is a public chain that supports smart contracts. There are two sorts of validators on Wanchain, one is PoS validators, responsible for verifying transactions, and the other is Storeman validators, accountable for verifying cross-chain transactions. In addition, The most significant feature of Wonchain's official cross-chain bridge is that it can connect BTC networks.

Fusion

In August 2018, Andre joined the Fusion Foundation as Head of Technology Innovation and Technical Advisor. Here is a brief introduction to Fusion, a public chain for DeFi, compatible with EVM and PoS consensus. The notable feature of Fusion is Distributed control rights management (DCRM). The specific method is to divide the asset private key into several parts (Key Sharding) and then store these partial private keys in different nodes. No one can control the entire private key. Andre worked at Fusion for over a year before joining the Fantom Foundation.

Fantom

In July 2018, Andre joined the Fantom Foundation and served as the technical director and then the chair of the technology council. Fantom is a project he is deeply involved in, and it is a well-known public chain. Fantom aims to solve the impossible dilemma of the current blockchain: scalability, security, and decentralization cannot exist simultaneously. It solves the issue through the Lachesis consensus mechanism and one Dapp one chain.

Lanchesis is an Asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerant (aBFT) consensus mechanism, which is used to ensure the high speed and security of the network. Network data can be processed at different times and filter out two-thirds of the erroneous And malicious transactions without affecting the network processing speed. While the aBFT PoS mechanism ensures the decentralization of the network, the mechanism does not use the traditional Delegated Proof of Stake, and there are no Masternodes. The specific scalability method is that Fantom creates different chains for different dapps to achieve the goal of scalability. For example, suppose a blockchain is a computer. When a lot of software run on this computer, the processing speed is naturally slow. But if only one software running on a computer, it will process very fast. These different chains will eventually be plugged into Lanchesis, ensuring that the network is secure, decentralized, and fast. According to DefiLlama, a total of 196 projects on Fantom are included, making it an ecologically rich public chain.

According to Fantom Scan, Fantom's average daily Gas Fee has reached two "sky-high" prices in the last month - 2630 Gwei and 2770 Gwei. On February 24, Fantom's TVL skyrocketed from $7.4 billion to $12.8 billion due to user funds coming across the chain from other ecosystems. And on March 6, TVL fell below $9 billion after hearing news of Andre's exit and scrambling to escape.

Admirers flocked to Fantom, then fled when they heard of Andre's exit

Yearn.Finance

In January 2020, Andre founded iearn.finance and later changed its name to Yearn.Finance. He created this project because Andre realized that the most important thing in DeFi is not DEX, not lending, but liquidity. With this idea in mind, he founded Yearn.Finance with around $42,000, and paid for auditing and custodial fees himself. Later Yearn.Finance brought a boom in liquidity mining and also made Andre famous.

Yearn.Finance initially provided stablecoin income strategies, and Andre also developed ytrade.finance: leveraged automatic market maker, yliquidate.finance: one-click liquidation on Aave, and yleverage.finance: provides: stablecoin leverage. The most famous of these is Yearn.Finance, which currently supports many assets and not just stablecoins. Yearn.Finance also announced its merging plan with many DeFi projects in November 2020, including Pickle, Cream, Cover Protocol, Sushiswap. On December 20, 2021, Yearn.Finance updated the token economics. The protocol revenue will be used to repurchase YFI tokens and then reward users who lock YFI tokens on the platform (veYFI). In addition, veYFI holders can also receive more rewards by voting, such as bribes. This token model update has also brought Yearn.finance, an OG DeFi project, back into the centre of the stage. It is worth mentioning that Andre, as the founder of Yearn.Finance, has not been heavily involved in the protocol development ever since early stages, which means that the community has been in charge of managing and upgrading Yearn.

Yearn.Finance developer clarifies that Andre's departure will have no impact on Yearn operation Source: Twitter

Keep3r

In August 2020, Andre began developing Keep3r, a decentralized work distribution platform. It is designed to help connect external developers and teams in need of work. The platform is mainly composed of two parts. The first are keepers, which refers to individuals or teams who complete the required tasks. The second, Jobs, refers to smart contracts that require an external team to perform specific actions.

Affected by Andre's exit, Keep3r plans to cease service on April 3, 2022 and welcomes community developers to take over. Source: Keep3r

Eminence

On October 7, 2020, the game project Eminence that Andre was involved in was attacked, and 15 million DAI was stolen. However, the hacker transferred 8 million DAI to Andre's address, making Andre receive accusations and even death threats. The hacking incident also put him under enormous pressure.

Bribe.crv.finance

In August 2021, Andre launched Bribe.crv.finance. This protocol helps DeFi project attract more liquidity by bribing veCRV holders and then getting Curve gauge votes to increase the APY of specific trading pairs. It also can provide veCRV holders more benefits. And the protocol automatically votes every ten days, without the need for users to constantly revote.

Rarity

In September 2021, Andre launched the Fantom-based game Rarity after being inspired by the loot project. Anyone can create a summoner, there are no limits, it doesn't cost anything (other than gas). Summoners include Druid, Warrior, Paladin, Ranger, etc. Each character can go on an adventure every day and gain 250 experience points. After earning enough experience points, you can level up, and these summoners will also gain various achievements and skills as they level up.

Solidly

In January 2022, Andre started posting about his latest project, Solidly.

1. Solidly is a Dex that combines Uniswap and Curve together. If you choose "variable" when adding liquidity, you will use Uniswap AMM. If you select ”stable" you will use Curve constant AMM.
2. The distribution of $SOLID is not available for every trading pair. Only trading pairs with staking veSOLID will receive $SOLID rewards. In turn, the transaction fee of $SOLID will go to veSOLID stakers, and liquidity providers can only receive $SOLID rewards.
3. The bribe feature, anyone can add a bribe to any trading pair for any number of any token. The bribe is for liquidity provider but for veSOLID holders. veSOLID holders can stake veSOLID to the bribed trading pair. Then the trading pair will attract more LPs to add liquidity and take the $SOLID rewards.
4. The release of $SOLID is determined by the amount of vesolid stakers. The more people lock it, the slower $SOLID emission is.
5. veSOLID can be converted into NFT for trades, unlike Curve's veCRV that is not tradeable.

After Solidly official launch on February 15, TVL peaked at $2.3 billion in just one week. With the news of Andre's exit, TVL has dropped significantly to $760 million. Solidly has also put up a notice that it plans to cease service on April 3, welcoming community developers to take over.

Same UI, just with a different color Source: Solidly

Solidly was supposed to be an innovative project that would inspire other DeFi developers. But when $SOLID was launched, there was an unexpected situation: Solidly was launched with initial voting rights (there was no veSOLID at this time) given to the top 20 projects on Fantom for free Each project voted for their own pool-2 on Solidly. One of the projects, Reaper Farm, is a veteran yield aggregator on Fantom, also the only one of the top 20 projects that has not released native token. The problem was that $SOLID was already avaliable and Reaper didn't have a native token, so they couldn't vote for their own pool-2. So Reaper came up with a trick: they temporarily released a placeholder token that only their team could farm, and voted for the pool-2 of the placeholder token. Of course Reaper was also releasing their native token $OATH and promised to share all the money they farmed with $OATH when it went live, which sounded reasonable. But Andre felt that the $SOLID he was supposed to give to the Fantom community had been cut off by Reaper, and publicly tweeted accusing Reaper of stealing money from the Fantom community. Reaper users and fans also took to Twitter to fight for Reaper and engage in a confrontation with Andre, who in a fit of rage deleted his Twitter account...

That's it Source: Reaper Farm

Closing Thoughts

We've heard mixed reviews of Andre's departure. Some see him as a prolific businessman who contributed a lot to the DeFi ecosystem for gains, trying to become the real godfather of DeFi by catching up with popular projects and stirring up market sentiment. Now he has made a lot of money and is washing his hands of it before a possible bear market. Others see him as a Builder in DeFi, not resting on his laurels and repeatedly bringing innovation to the blockchain industry.

Some believe Andre was forced to "retire" for legal regulatory reasons, and that he may return in a few months under a different identity. Source: Twitter

A thousand readers have a thousand Hamlets. Whatever the reason for Andre Cronje's exit, the Crypto industry will not stop there. The news of Andre Cronje's departure has caused the price of many projects, especially the Fantom ecosystem, to plummet. But there are many real developers besides Andre behind these projects who are maintaining and developing them. We can't and shouldn't ignore their efforts and contributions.

On March 7, Fantom CEO clarified that Andre and Anton will hand over the running projects to the existing teams and community Source: Twitter

We wish these Dapps, which were scheduled to be discontinued on April 3, the best of luck in getting community developers to take them over. And we hope more developers will join the Crypto industry and build the future with us.