While the DeFi world is slowly becoming an important part of the crypto market, two of the most talented developers who have laid the foundation for this emerging trend are leaving it.
Prominent among those two names is Andre Cronje, who is considered the “Godfather of DeFi” for his work in popularizing the productivity optimization protocol Yearn.Finance. The protocol has earned respect from the crypto community, thanks in part to the rocketing momentum of the YFI token during what has come to be known as the “DeFi Summer” – a period of hot growth for blockchains. Decentralized financial applications.
Andre Cronje,
Later, Cronje also built a set of other popular applications on Ethereum and other blockchains that are compatible with EVM. Cronje is also known for his “test in prod” slogan as he often deploys his projects right on the blockchain before conducting evaluation.
Most recently, Cronje also led Solidly, a new Fantom project inspired by Curve Finance’s token escrow concept and OlympusDAO’s “(3,3)” design. Solidly was recently launched on Fantom and attracted billions of dollars of liquidity on the network.
Side by side with Cronje on a series of projects is Anton Nell, who has close ties to the Fantom platform. Nell’s close relationship with Cronje even began with Crypto Briefing, a cryptocurrency research company, when they jointly reviewed code for ICO projects.
Together the two have made a huge impact on the DeFi sector in recent years. However, a tweet this past Sunday by Nell shocked the DeFi world when he said: “Andre and I have decided to stop contributing to the field of crypto and DeFi.” And that this decision has been in the making for some time.
In fact, the crypto community has long questioned Cronje’s future when he began deleting his Twitter account and editing his LinkedIn account, saying he had stopped working for Yearn.Finance, Fantom and the entire Ethereum ecosystem. Not long after, in a Telegram message from the Keep3r Network community, Cronje confirmed his departure from the project.
Not only leaving the field, Nell’s tweet also said: “We are stopping development of about 25 apps and services on April 3, 2022.” More specifically, in a private message to Crypto Briefing, Cronje said the pair “only transfer/deauthorize domains and web apps that we control, and leave the crypto/DeFi realm.”
The protocols Cronje and Nell built will continue to operate (since they are written on smart contracts, there is no way to close them). In addition, Cronje also said that the couple will return to their work in the traditional finance sector.
Not long after this news, banteg, a developer of Yearn.Finance tried to reassure those involved in this project by saying: Cronje “hasn’t worked for Yearn for a year now… Even when he leaves here, there are still 50 full-time developers and 140 part-time contributors to support.”
Meanwhile, most of the projects linked to this pair are subject to sharp price fluctuations in response to this news. Yearn.Finance’s YFI token is down 7.5%, Keeper’s KP3R token is down 24.4%, and even Fantom’s FTM token is down 14.4%.
Refer to Cryptobriefing