DeFi pioneer Andre Cronje quits industry, associated projects slump

The rumors of their exits have sent the tokens of projects associated with them crashing amidst fears of a rug pull. Cronje’s associate, Anton Nell announced over Twitter:

“Andre and I have decided that we are closing the chapter of contributing to the defi/crypto space. There are around ~25 apps and services that we are terminating on 03 April 2022.”

In the thread, he stated that both have decided to stop contributing to the DeFi space and terminate their relationships with 25 apps and services. Among them are Yearn Finance, Keep3r network, Chainlist, Solidly, and Multichain.

According to Nell:

“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.”

Value of connected projects crash

The news has led to tokens associated with these projects losing a significant percentage of the value. Although some have slightly recovered, they’re all still in the red.

Fantom network, where Anton Nell served as a senior solutions architect for the Fantom Foundation, has seen almost a 13% drop in the value of its token FTM in the past 24 hours, per data from CryptoSlate.

Within the same period, Yearn. finance (YFI) has dropped by 6%, Solidly (SOLID) reduced by 67%, Multichain (MULTI) lost almost 14%, and Chainlist fell by 4.3%. All these shows just how influential Cronje is in the industry. But it also showed how miscommunication could ruin projects in the DeFicontributing space.

Senior Solutions Architect of Fantom Foundation Anton Nell said he and Andre Cronje will close the chapter of contibuting to the defi/crypto space. There are around 25 apps and services that they are terminating on 03 April 2022. https://t.co/uM1yeDv01i

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) March 6, 2022

Andre Cronje‘s initial response to the matter on the Keep3r telegram group made it seem like the projects were folding up. But, in reality, he was handing over to other teams. The fear of a rug pull led to the massive sell-offs by various holders. As many rushed to withdraw their funds, Fantom Network GAS rose to as high as 10,000 gwei.

However, the team behind the projects has tried to clarify matters. According to Fantom Foundation, the exit of Cronje doesn’t affect the project as “Fantom isn’t and never was a one-man team. There are 40+ people working at Fantom.”

We’re extremely grateful to Andre for all he did for crypto as a whole.

However, Fantom isn’t and never was a one man team.

There are 40+ people working at Fantom.

— Fantom Foundation (@FantomFDN) March 6, 2022

It added that the “development of Fantom won’t be impacted by Andre’s decision. Big things are coming, as scheduled.”

Banteg of Yearn Finance also tweeted:

“People burying YFI, you do realize Andre hasn’t worked on it for over a year? And even if he did, there are 50 full-time people and 140 part-time contributors to back things up.”

This won’t be the first time that Andre Cronje will be quitting. He has been considering quitting as far back as 2020. Only time will tell if he’ll come back.