As Andre Cronje exits the industry, yEarn Finance token price falls 11%

Fantom Foundation senior solution architect Anton Nell and the ecosystem’s leading DeFi developer, who is also the founder of yEarn Finance, Andre Cronje, have decided to leave the cryptocurrency industry.

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2/3

— Anton Nell (@AntonNellCrypto) March 6, 2022

«Unlike previous angry statements such as ‘DeFi development is rubbish’, this is not a knee-jerk reaction to criticism received after the project’s launch, but a decision we have been thinking about for some time. Thanks to everyone who supported us over the past few years”, Nell wrote.

According to him, they will stop collaborating on 25 projects, including yEarn Finance, Multichain and the recently launched Solidly Exchange. For some of these products, the developers’ departure is likely to mean closures. 

Solidly Exchange has already warned users that as of April 3, 2022 they will lose access to the service. 

«The source code is open; anyone wishing to continue hosting this service is welcome», the notice says. 

Within two hours of Nell’s announcement the native token price of the decentralized exchange collapsed by 66%.

Launched in February, Solidly Exchange rapidly gained popularity among users of the Fantom ecosystem. Just 17 days after launch, the TVL in its smart contracts exceeded $2.21 billion.

As of writing, the latest figure stood at $0.99 billion, according to DeFi Llama.

The sharp drop in TVL followed numerous user reports of funds disappearing from the exchange’s liquidity pools. Despite complaints, Cronje insisted that there were no errors in the project’s codebase, and a few days ago he deleted his Twitter account.

@solidlyexchange @AndreCronjeTech

I just used solidly to exchange $24k USD to FTM… showing 1.62 FTM per USD and set at 2% slippage….. and received 390 FTM rather than the 15k I was expecting….. so 25k just turned into $600

Could you investigate? https://t.co/88hPKNerlu

— Solidlytxissue (@solidlytxissue) February 25, 2022

In the wake of Nell’s announcement the prices of YFI and other Cronje projects also fell. For example, the price of yEarn Finance (YFI) dropped 11% within hours, and Multichain (MULTI) by nearly 20%, according to CoinGecko.

The lead developer of yEarn Finance, known as banteg, noted that users are burying the project in vain.

People burying YFI, you do realize 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.

— banteg (@bantg) March 6, 2022

«People bury YFI, you realize that Andre hasn’t worked on the project for more than a year? And even if he had, there are 50 full-time people and 140 part-time contributors to back development», wrote him.

In October 2021, yEarn Finance developers discovered a vulnerability in the Robo Vault smart contract, which could potentially have cost the project around $50 million.