Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Karsten Wenzlaff is a Crowdfunding and Fintech Expert from Germany. He is Secretary-General of Digit[...]
Legendary DeFi Builders, Andre Cronje and Anton Nell, are Exiting Crypto
Crpyto Briefing | Chris Williams | March 6, 2022
Andre Cronje is bowing out from DeFi. Cronje’s close partner Anton Nell announced that the pair would be leaving the space in a tweet early Sunday.
The DeFi space is losing two of its most talented developers. Cronje was widely regarded as the “Godfather of DeFi” for his various contributions to the space.
See: Communication protocol systems: SEC’s big DeFi move
Andre Cronje, the self-styled “DeFi architect” who rose to prominence as the founder of the yield optimization protocol Yearn.Finance, is moving away from DeFi and crypto for good. Anton Nell, another builder best known for his ties to the Fantom ecosystem, will also be bowing out with Cronje. Nell broke the news in a Sunday tweet. “Andre and I have decided that we are closing the chapter of contibuting [sic.] to the defi/crypto space,” Nell wrote, before adding that it was “a decision that has been coming for a while now.” Nell, who worked closely with Cronje across his various projects, explained that the pair would be shutting down the websites they control and stepping away from the space. Prior to working on Fantom, Nell had a brief stint reviewing ICO projects for Crypto Briefing alongside Cronje.
Questions surrounding Cronje’s future in crypto started surfacing this week when he deleted his Twitter account and amended his LinkedIn profile to indicate that he had stopped working on Yearn.Finance, Fantom, and the broader Ethereum ecosystem. He later confirmed to the Keep3r Network community that he would be leaving the project in a Telegram message.
Cronje, who had a big impact on Crypto Briefing‘s early years as Chief Code Reviewer prior to his various DeFi engagements, confirmed the news and reiterated that the protocols he and Nell built would continue to run (notably, as they are deployed as immutable smart contracts, there’s no way to shut them down).
See: In the face of wreckage, DeFi’s self-policing shines
Writing in a private message to Crypto Briefing, Cronje said that they “are simply transferring/decommissioning the domains and webapps we control, and moving away from defi/crypto.”
Cronje said that the pair would be returning to their careers in the traditional finance sector.
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