Under the DeFi market, the skyrocketing of YFI has made founder Andre Cronje (hereinafter referred to as AC) become famous in the first battle and become one of the most influential figures in the cryptocurrency industry in 2020.
It is undeniable that YFI is the most representative project of AC. It can also be said that YFI and AC have achieved each other.
It’s just that when the DeFi tide receded, the price of YFI currency fell, and the community needed project innovation and AC continued to work hard, AC focused on other projects.
However, the new projects EMN, LBI, and KPR have “thunderstorms” one after another, causing AC’s reputation to decline and even being condemned.
Investors suspected that AC would use the new project to cut leeks. YFI community members complained about the decline in currency prices due to the weak development of YFI.
Because YFI stepped onto the altar’s AC, it was falling from the altar.
YFI and AC achieve each other
Speaking of Andre Cronje (AC), yearn.finance (YFI) must not be avoided.
yearn.finance is the first DeFi aggregator created by AC, which can automatically move positions between DeFi protocols that provide liquidity mining to help users maximize asset returns. It was born in the early days of liquid mining and pioneered the concept of machine gun pool. Coupled with the token design without pre-mining, no investment institutions, and no team rewards, YFI was wildly sought after by the cryptocurrency community as soon as it went online.
If there is also a “traffic dispute” in the currency circle, then YFI was once the top stream in the circle, “43 days skyrocketing more than ten thousand times”, “30 days to complete the 8-year market of Bitcoin”…
There is no doubt that YFI is the strongest dark horse project in 2020 in the true sense.
YFI has only been online for a few months, but its development and innovation speed is much higher than most projects in the cryptocurrency field. The community team has successively integrated insurance, options, NFT and other related strategies, and subsequent updates have made many investors think that this project has unlimited possibilities.
At that time, DeFi was booming, the community continued to innovate and develop, and the price of YFI currency rose all the way, which also made more people realize AC, and AC’s influence in the circle gradually became apparent.
So after he tweeted to praise ERC1155, the ENJ token rose by nearly 20 points, which is enough to see its influence in the industry.
But in fact, AC was already well-known in the cryptocurrency community before YFI.
Encryption giants who entered the circle in 2018
Looking at AC’s past resume, it is not difficult to find that he has participated in the development of multiple projects before YFI.
Andre majored in law when he was studying. After graduation, he started to get involved in computer-related fields because of his work, and he has more than ten years of software architecture development experience.
He first came into contact with the cryptocurrency field in 2017. At that time, in order to have a deeper understanding of the industry, he not only read the code by himself, but also shared his learning process and experience on social networking sites.
In 2018, AC officially entered the cryptocurrency industry. He has served as a technical consultant for multiple projects and participated in the development of several projects at the same time. In the same year, he and his friends developed an encrypted wallet, but because it was a bear market at the time, the team was unable to support the project operation and ended in failure.
In addition, AC has also opened up a personal column on the Crypto Briefing website, where it will publish its own views on a project or code review results, including well-known projects such as Cosmos and Grin. As AC has expressed opinions on more projects, his coding technology has also been recognized by some industry developers, and has gradually accumulated a certain degree of popularity.
At the beginning of 2020, AC established iearn.finance out of pocket. During that time, DeFi hadn’t exploded on a large scale, so the iearn platform was only known to a small group of people.
In mid-2020, Compound issued governance tokens and introduced a new method of liquid mining. Subsequently, AC also issued the governance token YFI. During that time, YFI developed like a bamboo, and many related imitations appeared in the market.
Crazy speculators, “experiments” overturning cars
It’s just unexpected that after YFI, AC actually “rolled over” several times within a month, and three consecutive projects plummeted, causing community controversy.
Judging from the performance since entering the circle, AC is a real development maniac, keen on project innovation, which is one of the reasons why yearn.finance’s update iteration speed hangs on other projects in the currency circle.
In September, when the NFT was hot, AC once tweeted two consecutive tweets about Eminence.finance (EMN).
At that time, the YFI was still hot, and after speculators saw AC like it, a lot of money poured into the EMN address. But at that time EMN was still in the testing phase, and the contract had not undergone security audits. Hackers used contract vulnerabilities to steal nearly $15 million in funds, of which $8 million was broken into Andre’s contract address. EMN tokens plummeted to nearly zero.
We don’t know why the hacker intended this action, but he directly pushed out AC to block the gun. Some people pointed the finger at AC, thinking that he was responsible for the incident.
AC sent several tweets to explain the situation and apologized, and also asked the Ministry of Finance to assist in refunding the amount the hacker transferred to his address. But some people are still dissatisfied with this. They attacked AC on Twitter, and some even issued death threats to him.
Even now, some users have initiated crowdfunding projects centered on the EMN incident, and will file a lawsuit against AC and YFI core personnel in response to the EMN incident, and even fork YFI.
After this turmoil, AC publicly stated that it will not mention any new projects in its Twitter and Ethereum addresses in the future. After that, AC’s Twitter did not change for many consecutive days, and there were even rumors that AC might withdraw from YFI, but the news was subsequently rejected.
Shortly after the EMN incident, AC introduced the newly designed token model LBI in his Medium. The article wrote: LBI can be used to generate as many transaction costs as possible and eliminate impermanence losses.
But this time, the “scientists” entered the market early by calling the contract address posted by AC at the end of the article, and speculated the price of LBI currency very high, triggering fomo. When retail investors entered the market, they sold a large number of proxies at high positions. Currency, leading to the collapse of currency prices, retail investors are covered.
Recently, AC launched its own new project, Keep3r Network (KPR). Because of the lessons learned from EMN and LBI, AC did not publish information about the project on Twitter and Medium. However, after he deployed the KRP contract, speculators once again found the address of the project through his Github and recharged it, which also increased the token price of the project by more than 20 times.
It’s a pity that KPR can’t escape the fate of a sharp drop. This time it’s because AC deployed KPR contracts multiple times during the test, which caused the fund pool to follow the pace of AC deployment. The funds went to the new address. Once the funds from the old address were withdrawn , The currency price collapsed naturally.
Regardless of the “disclaimer” on the top of AC’s Twitter, whether it is EMN, LBI or KPR, each project AC has said in the Github document or Medium that this is an “experiment”, but the effect is minimal.
The speculators seem to hold the attitude of seeking wealth and wealth insurance, and still ignore the risk to pay money to the unaudited test site.
AC walks down the altar
After three consecutive projects hit the street, AC’s highlight moment has obviously passed.
Some people think that AC has no intention of developing YFI, and its new project is suspected of cutting leek. The number of Twitter followers exceeds 50,000, and the Ethereum address is always followed by everyone. As a public figure, you should be more cautious in your words and deeds when you are influential. As for the disclaimer on top of Twitter, it cannot be a talisman.
Some people also believe that investors need to be responsible for their own assets and should be aware of the risk points before entering the market, and should not dump AC after losing money. As the developer of the project, he has warned of risks and has not called out orders. Investment itself is an act of self-sufficiency.
In any case, it can be seen that after the carnival, the DeFi fever is fading, and many popular mining projects at the beginning are facing the problem of unsustainable drainage, and most of the mining coins in the market have fallen horribly.
The YFI currency price has fallen by nearly 70% from the high point, the product yield rate has fallen, and the competitiveness of DeFi products is insufficient. The amount of funds locked in the project has also been reduced by half from the high point.
The current market conditions and enthusiasm are obviously lower than in August. AC, as a decisive figure in the circle, should know how to follow the trend. The difficulty of the rise of new projects has increased, and speculators are watching their actions closely, so he is naturally prone to back the pot and even attract notoriety.
As the community said: “If the new project is an experiment or test, can’t he test it quietly? Every time a new project plunges, it is a consumption of YFI.”
