In the last few days, Fantom’s price shot from the lows of US$0.3 to US$0.5. This has been attributed to users realizing Andre Cronje may be returning to the cryptocurrency market. As someone with strong ties to the ecosystem, his return has inspired hope for many.

So, who exactly is Andre Cronje? Is he returning? And most importantly — does it matter?

Also Read: Will Fantom Succeed? Andre Conje Leaving Crypto, $FTM’s Current Economic Outlook

Who is Andre Cronje?

While his name may be unfamiliar, you have likely used one or more of his projects.

Known as the “Godfather of Defi”, he is the creator of Yearn Finance and Keep3r, and helped develop other protocols such as Pickle finance, Multichain, and Cream V2.

More recently, he launched Solidly, an Automatic Market Maker with an innovative Tokenomics model. Christened Ve(3,3), it combined Olympus Dao’s rebasing model, with Curve’s veToken mechanism. This allows users to lock their tokens without their voting power being diluted by inflationary rewards.

However, the launch had its fair share of controversy. Users quickly realized that the APY’s could be gamed and some lost large amounts of money through low liquidity transactions.

Drama with bytemasons, another Fantom project launching around the same time, did not help.

Another developer, Anton Nell, tweeted that both he and Andre were leaving Defi afterward. This led to most of his projects dumping, and fear across the Fantom ecosystem.

However, Andre has publicly announced leaving DeFi before, in February and August of 2020. Those events caused $FTM to fall by 80% and 50% respectively, but eventually returned more than 1000% gains amidst a wider bull market.

Is he returning to Fantom?

A recent update from the Fantom foundation revealed that Andre had contributed code on fMint protocol. This was during Terra’ collapse when users were worried about $fUSD’s collateral and stability.

This led to $FTM price rallying, as he is still seen as a figurehead in the community.

A quick look at his Ethereum wallet and Github also shows that Andre would continue to contribute even during his downtime.

Does it really matter?

Andre’s impact on the space cannot be ignored. He was pivotal to Defi Summer and had a hand in creating many widely used protocols.

However, Fantom, or any other ecosystem, cannot rely on a sole developer. Faces will come and go, but their ideas will stay forever.

Despite the controversy and price action, Fantom continues to gain a strong, organic userbase and remains as one of the most innovative L1s.

As a community, it may be time to reflect on how we treat the developers that allow us to do so much in the space. Not associating price with a protocol’s strength and learning to contribute in a meaningful way will be important going forward.

[Editor’s Note: This article does not represent financial advice. Please do your own research before investing.]

Featured Image Credit: Chain Debrief

Also Read: What’s Next For Us? A Degen’s Perspective On The Crypto Bear Market And The Future

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