"A very pale, chubby, nerdy kid"
In Cape Town, South Africa, Andre Cronje had a different upbringing. Born into a traditional family, his father was a natural science teacher and his mother was a librarian. His sister Tanja, who was five years older than him, remembered him as a "sweet little brother" who loved animals and the outdoors. Although the comments from the outside world drifted into the family from time to time, causing Tanja to worry, these did not seem to affect Andre's childhood.
However, Cronje's memories of his childhood are more bitter. He once described himself as "a very pale, chubby, nerdy kid" who was bullied in a school that prided itself on sports. But it was in this environment that he found a way to isolate himself from the world - programming. He began to explore the world of programming by writing small games such as Hangman, using the programming language Pascal. But in his first computer science class, he had already discovered a problem that he would often encounter in the future: no one could keep up with his pace, not even the teacher.
The road to growth does not seem to be smooth, but every stage is laying the foundation for his future career.
Completed 3 years of computer courses in half a year
When Cronje entered Stellenbosch University as a teenager to start his law degree, he had the dream of arguing in court. However, he soon lost interest in the boring and lack of practice of law. The only part that excited him was the mooting part, which accounted for a very small proportion of the entire course. This made him start to rethink his future.
Just when he was feeling lost in the legal field, an accidental opportunity led him to the world of programming. At that time, his roommate needed to go to another training institution, Computer Training Institute, to take a computer science class, and Cronje began to provide him with a ride. Gradually, he became interested in computer science and began to attend classes at CTI. Soon after, he decisively turned to the field of computer science and completed the three-year course in half a year at an amazing speed, eventually becoming a lecturer at Computer Training Institute.
Over the next decade, he worked in a variety of fields, including telecommunications, big data, mobile security, and fintech companies, taking on roles in software development and engineering management. Each project and each role continued to hone his skills and vision.
The Bitcoin bull market in 2017 attracted his attention, and he began to pay attention to blockchain technology. At this time, he was already a senior software developer with a rich understanding of distributed networks. He began to study GitHub repositories and cryptocurrency white papers in his spare time, and gradually he was attracted by the decentralized concept behind blockchain and the social changes it might bring. However, he soon realized that the "token culture" in the field of cryptocurrency seemed to overemphasize trading and financial elements, while ignoring the value of technology and products. This situation disappointed him, but it also inspired his determination to explore more possibilities, which laid the groundwork for his future creation of Yearn Finance.
The old man in the encryption field
As the Bitcoin bull run came to an end in 2017, Andre Cronje’s life changed irreversibly. When his business partner temporarily left him for his honeymoon, Cronje began to study blockchain technology on his own, reading various white papers and GitHub repositories in depth. He recalled: “If he hadn’t gotten married and hadn’t gone on a honeymoon, I might still be doing what I’ve been doing for the past five years.” This was undoubtedly an opportunity for him to get in touch with a whole new field.
In September 2020, on Laura Shin's podcast "Unchained", he recalled that the end of 2017 was a turning point because "that was the first time there were enough assets, enough protocols, enough tools." According to his LinkedIn profile, Cronje is a bit older than most people in the cryptocurrency field and studied law before learning to code. But once he became interested in coding, he mastered the skill at an incredible speed and soon found a job in the communications field, familiar with distributed (although not decentralized) systems.
When cryptocurrencies caught his attention, he started doing code reviews at Crypto Briefing and eventually joined an ICO-funded project called Fantom, a directed acyclic graph (DAG) blockchain project from South Korea. Even then, he was frustrated with the "token culture." He expressed his feelings on his YouTube show "Oh Hey Matty" in March 2019: "Too much time, energy, and capital is invested in tokens instead of in products, which are good for tokens in the long run."
However, he accepted the challenge of helping people earn more crypto tokens through crypto tokens.
The Birth of iEarn
Cronje recalled that Yearn's original intention was actually very simple. He had his own small stablecoin portfolio and tried to manage it like a savings account. "90% of DeFi is figuring out how these protocols interact with each other." His preference for stablecoins stems from his dislike of dealing with the permanent loss problems that may arise from liquidity pools of non-stable coins. For him, understanding the cryptocurrency market is too complicated and risky.
On February 4, 2020, he wrote a Medium article about launching iEarn (which later became Y.Earn), describing how he had to personally pay thousands of dollars to get it online. At the end of the month, he wrote again, describing the multiple obstacles he encountered during the launch process. Despite the challenges, he found the process "very fun" and that each challenge made the entire ecosystem more robust.
However, reality soon came to a head. In one case, a user suffered a loss after exchanging a large amount of assets due to front-end issues. Cronje wrote an article titled "It's really terrible to build in #DeFi," and honestly expressed his feelings: "Frankly, it sucks. It's expensive, the community is very hostile, and users feel entitled."
Facing constant criticism from the community and unrealistic expectations from users, he felt the pressure. Cronje understood that he did not want to be “the bank that provides 24/7 technical support and customer support.”
Yield Farming 101
The crypto market in 2019 is in a deep bear state, and everyone is only willing to hold stablecoins and wait for bargain hunting, so an obvious demand is the risk-free appreciation of stablecoins. Initially, only money markets such as AAVE, Compound and dYdX could provide risk-free returns on lending.
iEarn has created a buzz for automating yield optimization, which allows users to earn lucrative income by investing their cryptocurrencies in DeFi protocols for lending or trading, especially during the more booming days of cryptocurrencies. However, seeking returns from this strategy, known as “yield farming,” can be laborious.
Research firm Nansen found that most yield farmers abandon protocols after two to three days. Timing is key. The best yield farmers know exactly when to pile in — or “rush” — and when to move on to the next protocol. iEarn automates this task — letting users pool their crypto into smart contracts called treasuries and rotate them among protocols like dYdX, Aave, and Compound.
Then, the liquidity incentive war began. Compound opened fire first with its COMP token. And the competition for liquidity began. Balancer followed with BAL, mStable launched MTA, Fulcrum launched BZX, and Curve is still waiting in the trenches to unveil CRV.
But this makes yield farming more complex, and simple profit switching decisions are no longer sufficient.
Subsequent iterations renamed iEarn to Y.Earn (from ‘I Earn’ to ‘You Earn’), and a month after COMP’s launch, Cronje wrote “Yield Farming 101” on Medium, excitedly explaining how yield optimization becomes complicated when stablecoin deposits also earn volatility growth tokens.
The liquidity incentive war has led to a huge increase in yEarn’s locked funds, and this is just an appetizer before the main meal. What really made yEarn a giant is the launch of YFI.
Fair Release
Typically, project founders keep a portion of the tokens for themselves, but Cronje's approach is a groundbreaking change. He introduced a concept called "Fair Launch," a token distribution method that does not retain initial tokens. Scott Lewis, from the DeFi Pulse metrics project, commented: "Andre invented a new way to launch a project without capital. He proved that you can launch a DeFi project by just building something, then building a community, and then using the revenue from what you built to fund the team."
On July 17, 2020, Cronje revealed plans for his own growth token, YFI. Cronje’s reputation has soared because he did not keep any tokens for himself. On Yearn, anyone who provides liquidity in some pools has a chance to earn YFI tokens, with no pre-mine, no reservations, and no advance notification to insiders. Arguably, Bitcoin does the same thing, except it rewards hash power instead of deposits, but it’s still just a matter of putting resources into the contributions that a particular project wants most.
Lewis said: “Dozens of projects launched by Yearn were inspired to launch in the same way. The success of YFI has greatly lowered the threshold for builders to release their works.”
Kulechov, founder of AAVE, said the team is allocating money not just to extract wealth from decentralized applications, but to stay relevant. He said: "A lot of founders are always thinking: What if governance doesn't want to support me? What if they want to get rid of me? They have these fears."
In just two months, TVL has rapidly grown to nearly $1 billion, and four months later it has reached a staggering $7 billion, while the price of YFI has increased by tens of thousands of times to $40,000. This is a huge success.
Eminence
The success of YFI has made many people rich, and the Cronje concept sector has emerged in the market. Even an inadvertent like on Twitter can lead to the rise of related currencies, and risks are also accumulating.
In September 2020, Cronje revealed a new Web3 project called Eminence, which he described as a DeFi protocol for the gaming multiverse. He posted a vague announcement (only a picture of the artwork, no hyperlink) on Twitter one night before going to bed.
As the morning sun filled the room, Cronje woke up from his deep sleep and found shocking news - even though Eminence did not yet have a user interface or front end, users had already deposited $15 million in DAI into the project. He couldn't help but laugh, but the laughter was full of bitterness. Users found his open source smart contract in the digital jungle and exchanged tokens directly into the contract.
However, the good luck did not seem to last long. At the same time, another user discovered a vulnerability in the code and stole all the $15 million in funds. Cronje stared at the screen with a conflicted heart. Not long after, the mysterious user returned $8 million to a Yearn finance contract. This made things even more confusing.
The failure of Eminence has created huge waves in the community. Many people questioned and blamed Cronje's decision-making, and his incomplete and untested application caused losses to investors. He had expected Eminence to be a pioneering project that combined non-fungible tokens (NFTs) with trading card games. His love for games and exploration of new things drove him to reveal information about the game on Twitter, causing fans to search frantically.
However, the sudden flash loan attack wiped out $15 million, and Cronje's heart seemed to be pierced by the harsh reality.
In a later article titled "Interpreting My Relationship with DeFi," Cronje wrote: "The openness of these systems is a double-edged sword. I need to think more about this." This seems to indicate his uncertainty about the future, and also makes people feel his deep understanding and reflection on open systems. In the exploration and experimentation of the digital space, every step he takes seems to show us the infinite possibilities and challenges of the unknown world.
“We’re giving these worthless tokens away for free”
In the ever-changing world of decentralized finance, Andre Cronje stands out like a shining star. His unconventional personality and unpredictable creativity have become a hot topic. However, behind every hero is his unknown monologue, his unspeakable confusion and anxiety.
In that turbulent September, Andre had a live exchange with Chainlink’s Sergey Nazarov, during which he said earnestly: “People are making enviable fortunes through a brand new Ponzi scheme that we invented, which is governance tokens. We give away these worthless tokens for free, and for some reason, people are willing to buy them, and then the next wave of people will come and buy the tokens of the previous wave of people.”
It is clear that Andre's words reveal his ambivalence towards the industry and its culture, even though he has also contributed a very valuable governance token to the field. He is well aware of this fact and is also confused by it. Whenever someone asks him why the YFI token is so valuable, he always chooses to avoid the question.
His Twitter bio succinctly captures his modus operandi: “I test in prod.” “Prod” in this context refers to the final stage of the software development lifecycle, when code is exposed to real-world use after being polished and perfected in multiple testing environments. In just a few words, Cronje summarizes his modus operandi—he rapidly builds software solutions to address emerging challenges in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space, often with a warning to those who would venture into using his projects.
He once expressed his philosophy in a tweet: "Disclaimer: When I build software, it's for me. If you do want to interact with it, be careful, there will be bugs. Interfaces are there to make my life easier. I will make mistakes. If you don't understand it, don't use it."
In these few sentences, Cronje opened a window into his worldview and work philosophy. He is not a programmer bound by fixed rules. He has a clear purpose to solve problems, even if it means that his methods may subvert traditional software development principles. In his world, facing problems and responding quickly is more important than spending time in a perfect testing environment.
If you think about it carefully, this approach is surprisingly consistent with Musk's five-step working method. As time goes by, every decision and every action is like a puzzle piece, which converges into Cronje's unique picture in the DeFi world. Every twist and turn adds a lot to his legendary story, and every reflection becomes the driving force for his continuous progress. In the boundless digital field, his journey is far from over.
This article was originally written by @hiCaptainZ
Reference：
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/12/08/andre-cronje-defi-expressionist/
https://medium.com/iearn/yield-farming-101-d983a27c542e
https://www.bitstamp.net/learn/people-profiles/andre-cronje/
https://www.dlnews.com/articles/web3/andre-cronje-the-rise-and-fall-of-a-defi-god/
