Andre Cronje Has Exited Fantom – This is Why it Matters

Fantom fell as much as 25% yesterday after news broke that crypto developer Andre Cronje stepped away from the project.

Not only has Cronje exited Fantom, but the famed DeFi architect reportedly plans to quit the space entirely.

On Saturday, Cronje’s colleague and former Fantom Foundation senior solutions architect Anton Nell tweeted that the pair would be exiting the DeFi/crypto space completely.

“Andre and I have decided that we are closing the chapter of contibuting [sic] to the defi/crypto space,” Nell tweeted. “There are around ~25 apps and services that we are terminating on 03 April 2022.”

No reason was given for the pair’s exit, but Cronje updated his LinkedIn page to reflect that he is no longer involved in Fantom.

Following the announcement, the price of FTM plummeted to lows of US$1.32 – a range not seen since last year, and 60% below its all-time-high of US$3.46 in October 2021.

Who is Andre Cronje?

For many, including one of our writers, Cronje was integral to the success of Fantom. Described as a “prolific coder and legendary DeFi founder” by Crypto Briefing, Cronje’s credentials include founding Yearn.Finance, DeFi architect behind curve.finance, and a number of other prominent DeFi projects.

In our feature piece about why Fantom is spookily undervalued, we highlighted that Cronje is set to Airdrop his ve(3,3) DeFi project updates on the Fantom blockchain. The South African developer described the project as an “emission based token that could balance ecosystem participants”.

Cronje’s exit has thus dealt a severe blow to Fantom with regards to its imminent updates. Nell’s exit is also of concern as his heavy involvement in Yearn.Finance, Keep3r Network, Multichain.xyz, Solidly, Chainlist and Bribe Crv Finance brought a high level of expertise to Fantom.

Although neither Cronje nor Nell explicitly explained the reasons behind their departure, Cronje said in 2020 that he was on the verge of quitting crypto, citing a “toxic” DeFi community. That said, Nell did say their exit was not reactionary.

“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”, Nell tweeted.

Responding to the pair’s exit, Fantom Foundation CEO Michael Kong reassured investors that “the Fantom ecosystem consists of hundreds of developers building many great applications. They will continue”.

“Anton (Nell), who works with Andre, tweeted that they were ‘terminating’ 25 projects. This was misunderstood. They are ‘terminating’ their involvement, but handing over anything they run to the existing teams”, Kong tweeted.

Whilst Cronje and Nell’s exit certainly feels like a blow for Fantom investors, the incredible technology behind the project still remains inspiring. As our writer highlighted, Fantom has a TPS capacity of 300,000. To put this into perspective, Solana’s TPS is 50,000 and even the highly anticipated ETH 2.0 has a max capacity of 100,000 TPS.

With or without Cronje’s help, if Fantom can achieve a TPS of 300,000, it would still elevate the bar for rival blockchains and revolutionise the DeFi space.