The announcement of the exit plans of Andre Cronje and Anton Nell, the key personnel of Fantom Foundation, a blockchain platform for DeFi and crypto dApps, has made the DeFi market jittery. The native token Fantom, and all other tokens related to its project have since crashed as much as 30 percent.

"Andre and I have decided that we are closing the chapter of contributing

Cronje is a developer, while Nell is a senior solutions architect at the Fantom Foundation.

Their departure doesn’t come as much of a surprise. In the past, Cronje has often stated that he would be leaving the world of DeFi. For instance, in 2020, Cronje told Decrypt that he was “sick and tired of this space”, but he continued to work on a handful of DeFi projects.

Why spooked the market and what’s the outlook?

As noted by Raj A Kapoor, Founder, India Blockchain Alliance several apps, developed by the duo, will also be shutting down with their exits. "The price fluctuation is a response to the news reiterates just how critical an individual can be to a crypto's value," he told the Economic Times.

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Some experts also pointed out that any uncertainty related to the founders of important projects tends to unnerve the market as is the case with Fantom now. Investors are also worked up since the reason for the exit is also unclear.

However, this latest announcement might be more substantial. For starters, his partner Anton Nell is quitting with him. And the fact that the Fantom Foundation's official Twitter handle also tweeted about his exit could mean that his departure is set in stone.

Websites and applications like Yearn.fi and keep3r.network, multichain.XYZ, chainlist.org, solidly.exchange, and bribe.crv.finance will also be discontinued by Nell and Cronje.

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While many people involved in the DeFi space were disappointed by their exit, others pointed out that various developers were involved in both Yearn.Finance and the Fantom Foundation. Therefore the impact of their leaving may not have long-term impact.

A Fantome developer, banteg tweeted, “People burying YFI, you do realise 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."

A former Ethereum core developer, James Hancock, told Decrypt, “As long as the contracts are immutable or don’t require Andre’s approval for changes, they will continue to work as deployed."

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Edul Patel, CEO and co-founder of Mudrex told Economic Times that "…we might see some sell-off initially…one person’s exit is only causing turmoil because of the sudden change."

Smart contracts are self-executing pieces of code that are central to any Decentralised application. Most Defi applications are based on blockchain-based smart contracts that remove the need for central authorities (like Cronje) to function and govern an application.

Andre Cronje’s involvement in DeFi

Cronje has been a trailblazer in the DeFi community. Along with his work on Fantom and Yearn.Finance, he has also had a hand in other DeFi projects such as SushiSwap and Creamv2. His aim has always been to build fintech solutions using blockchain technology to offer DeFi products and services to various individuals and entities.

Before entering the world of DeFi, he completed a three-year computer science course in just five months and was asked to stay on as a lecturer at the Computer Training Institute Education Group. He worked there as a lecturer for over a year.

In 2003 he also got his law degree from Stellenbosch University. He then developed Big Data and high transactional infrastructure for telecoms before getting into cryptography and mobile security.

(Edited by : Jomy Jos Pullokaran)