When DeFi Started to Suck
“Andre and I have decided that we are closing the chapter of contributing to the defi/crypto space,” posted Anton Nell, a Cape Town, South Africa-based Senior Solutions Architect at Fantom Foundation. “There are around ~25 apps and services that we are terminating on 03 April 2022.”
‘Andre’ is, of course, fellow South African Andre Cronje, superstar DeFi dev god responsible for bringing online billions in value.
Cronje confirmed Nell’s tweet in the Keep3r Telegram channel: “Please don't spread misinformation, my LinkedIN is the only source of truth. I've left all previous projects, website will remain up till 3rd April, I'm busy with all my handovers. I won't be responding to any questions on this further.”
For good measure Fantom CEO Michael Kong responded to rumors about Cronje’s exit, writing, “He doesn’t want to be public for the time being. Getting too much hate.”
Cronje-related projects are in full damage control mode.
Boost aggregator for Solidly on Fantom, for example, Solidex, assured they “have made arrangements to maintain the Solidly UI going forward. Solidly's contracts and immutable so they will go on forever.”
In particular peril by name are DeFi giants like Yearn, Keep3r, Multichain, Chainlist, Solidly, and Bribe.crv.
Coins associated are already plummeting on the news, and it appears users are pulling their respective financial positions from various Cronje protocols.
“We're extremely grateful to Andre for all he did for crypto as a whole,” a Fantom Foundation announcement began. “However, Fantom isn't and never was a one-man team. There are 40+ people working at Fantom.”
veDAO insisted they “are reaching out to partners to coordinate a response,” pointing to how Cronje’s platforms “are decentralized projects, and community coordination was always going to be the thing that makes them live. There are some improvements and moves to be made, and we have every intention of seeing this through.”
And Then Politics Came for Us
Cronje’s pseudo-rugging follows a solid week of politics lurching into DeFi.
Anon, you don’t open our content, surf our guides, listen to our podcasts, attend our Twitter Spaces, and grok our daily wire for politics.
Degen apes keep politics carefully compartmentalized.
We have them, of course, but here is our forum for straight-up yield aping. No moral finger wagging. No preachy gobblygook.
We. Ape. Yield.
Unfurl your freaky ape yield flag, anon. We’re all frens, pushing an inclusive WAGMI vibe.
Do not get it twisted: the specifics of each cause below are simply beyond our scope. We’re dedicated to staying well within our degen lane.
However. *clears throat* How. Ever.
The Ukrainian government offered an airdrop, and then promptly rugged.
OpenSea began censoring customers in Venezuela.
Infura did basically the same, taking MetaMask with it in the process. And like Cronje, Infura casts a long shadow.
Making the case for censorship-resistant financing is getting more urgent, seemingly by the day. A lot of the hard-fought lessons many of us thought had been learned from TradFi clearly have not.
Out of the Suckage
Take heart apes!
Out of the suckage will come inevitable pivoting and evolution … if DeFi is worth anything. That simply must be the case.
Too much emphasis on cults of personalities, along with not understanding obvious censorial chokepoints, spotlight DeFi’s most ironic of all problems: lack of decentralization.
DeFi will adapt and change or it will die as any fad should.
These are the tests it needs.
We’re here for them all, even the sour parts.
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