From marginal coder to DeFi center, AC's crypto era comes to an end

Source: PANews

On the afternoon of March 6, DeFi developer and senior architect of the Fantom Foundation, Anton Nell, announced on Twitter that he and Andre Cronje (AC) have decided to exit the DeFi and cryptocurrency space, and will shut down approximately 25 applications and services on April 3, 2022, including yearn.fi, keep3r.network, chainlist.org, solidly.exchange, and bribe.crv.finance. Anton Nell stated that this is not a subconscious reaction of hatred towards the projects, but a decision that has been made for some time.

The crypto community erupted.

Some angrily accused AC of "rug pulling" and being irresponsible to users and investors; they claimed that while he said his exit was a long-considered decision, he still launched Solidly in February to cash out one last time.

Others praised him, paying tribute to AC's continuous innovation and contributions to the DeFi space over the years; they believed that AC, compared to others in the crypto circle who have made a fortune, focuses more on the product aspect and is a true builder.

The end of AC's crypto era

AC's exit did not come without warning.

Previously, Andre Cronje had deactivated his Twitter account and noted on LinkedIn that his work duration for products like Fantom and Yearn Finance ended in February 2022.

On February 25, Yearn Finance, the yield aggregation protocol AC launched, announced that it had merged multiple projects at the end of 2020, including SushiSwap, CREAM Finance, Akropolis, and Pickle Finance.

Despite strong collaboration among the various project teams and many successes, these projects never became a true merged entity, causing confusion and uncertainty regarding roles and responsibilities within their respective communities, which slowed down decision-making.

As a result, each protocol will operate independently in the future while maintaining a partnership with Yearn Finance. Additionally, Iron Bank will operate as an independent project with its own communication channels and frontend, while continuing to serve as a liquidity partner for Yearn Vaults.

It can be said that due to continuous innovation, experimentation, successes, and failures, AC has gained followers over the past two years while also facing ongoing skepticism from the community. He has long been embroiled in controversy due to multiple new projects failing. After handing over all YFI tokens and control to the community, AC launched the Gamefi concept-based multiverse game project Eminence (EMV) in September 2020.

Due to Eminence being untested and having vulnerabilities, a hacker exploited a flash loan attack to steal 15 million DAI, causing the EMV price to nearly drop to zero. Subsequently, the hacker transferred 8 million dollars back to AC's contract address. In an instant, AC became the focal point of controversy, even receiving "death threats" from the DeFi community.

Previously, AC had also stated multiple times that the DeFi community is toxic; in his view, he was not developing for speculators but for developers. His core goal was to develop tools that would allow other developers to easily use or inherit the templates he designed and create products with them. He worried that the involvement of speculators would lead to a misalignment of incentives. He also mentioned that DeFi made him neglect his life, health, and mental well-being.

Regardless, such an exit announcement still shocked the community. The projects he closely collaborated with and created, such as Fantom, yearn.finance, solidly, and Multichain, all plummeted suddenly.

From a marginal coder to the center of DeFi

Before becoming the "King of DeFi," AC was just an engineer known to very few people; of course, every "mythical" figure has a powerful brain. It can be said that AC did not come from a computer science background; he originally studied law and intended to become a defense attorney. Until one day, while taking a friend to a computer science lecture, AC attended the lecture himself and unexpectedly developed a strong interest in the course. Subsequently, AC self-studied related courses and successfully became a lecturer.

After that, AC worked at a mobile communications company and a large retail company, engaging with big data, neural networks, lending, insurance, and retail platforms, but this was clearly not the life AC wanted.

In 2017, AC developed a crypto wallet called CryptoCurve with friends, but it ultimately came to nothing. At the beginning of 2018, AC started a personal column on the crypto media Crypto Briefing, where he began to deeply review various projects, such as Cosmos, Grin, Holochain, IRIS Network, and QuarkChain.

As AC's sharing articles increased, his technical skills began to be recognized. While researching Ethereum and DeFi protocols, AC continuously explored the profit opportunities that liquidity could bring. He realized that the power of DeFi is not in tools, not in lenders, and not in DEXs (decentralized exchanges), but in assets. He believed that monetary Legos are one of the coolest things to emerge in a long time.

Based on these ideas, in early 2020, AC spent $42,467 to establish iearn.finance (later renamed Yearn.Finance), and spent twice that amount on auditing and custody. To raise this money, AC had to mortgage his house and incurred about $20,000 in debt.

Before DeFi exploded, Yearn's recognition was limited. Fame can be a double-edged sword; the criticism from the community made AC consider exiting the community at one point, and he complained, "The DeFi community is toxic." Until July of this year, due to the explosive popularity of liquidity mining, YFI gained immense fame after launching its governance token, and from then on, AC was viewed as a god-like figure by the outside world.

In the increasingly homogenized DeFi field, YFI staged a grand merger drama. Although the merger with Meituan is fundamentally different, the momentum of YFI's expansion can be compared to it. On November 24, 2020, AC announced that the developers of Pickle and YFI had designed a structure that would allow the two projects to work symbiotically and planned further integration.

Just two days later, AC announced again that the developers of Yearn and Cream had collaborated to launch Cream v2, focusing on core lending and leveraged products. While everyone was still in shock, Yearn also merged with Cover Protocol and Sushiswap in one go. In this lightning-fast merger, AC seemed to be building his own "DeFi business empire."

"Each partnership is similar to a team merger, with protocols leveraging each other, and all team members coordinating and sharing a vision." But AC believed this was different from previous merger practices, stating, "Decentralized finance allows us to cooperate, coexist, and still maintain individual identities."

Every word and action of AC became a "barometer" for investors' decisions and product innovations.

This time, AC, who developed out of interest, has grown weary and chosen to leave. Do you think he will return?