Andre Cronje - biography

Andre Cronje, a future blockchain developer, was born in Cape Town, the capital of South Africa. He prefers not to disclose information about his personal life.

In 2001, he enrolled at Stellenbosch University. Until 2003, Andre studied law, but then he decided to change his profession and started practicing computer science. He showed an outstanding aptitude in the study of information technology. In 2005, he successfully completed a 3-year degree at the Computer Training Institute (CTI), a private institution of higher learning in South Africa and worked there as a lecturer in computer science, law and graphic design.

He then joined Vodacom in South Africa in the mobile technical department where he worked in mobile security until August 2012. In 2013, he joined Shoprite's technical department. In 2015, he became the head of Freedom Life's I.T. division. In addition, in 2017, he took the position of DeFi Architect at Fantom Foundation in Seoul, South Korea. Later, he received an appointment as the Chairman of the Technology Council of Fantom Foundation.

His life changed in 2017 when his business partner went on a long honeymoon. At that time, Andre became interested in the world of cryptocurrencies to keep himself busy. The departure of his partner greatly influenced his further activity.

For about two years he studied the market and analyzed data, and then was invited to become a blockchain protocol consultant at BitDiem. A year later, Cronje took up writing and filming reviews on the news portal "CryptoBriefing" on various ICOs.

Observing the success and impressive profits from stablecoins that were invested in crypto networks, he decides to invest in such platforms. After that, André starts working on the development of his own app. And this leads to Yearn.finance, a platform that allows cryptocurrency holders to earn passive income in 2020. To launch the project, he needed a minimum of 42 thousand dollars, not including hosting and auditing costs. Andre had to take out a loan on his house to finance this project.He developed the protocol on Ethereum blockchain by himself. Due to the lack of financial intermediaries after the launch, the platform became a success. Cryptocurrency companies such as Aave and Curve Finance showed interest in the promising project.

A huge influence on the fate of Yearn.finance was the issuance of Yearn Finance's own token (YFI). At the beginning, 30 thousand coins were issued and distributed among liquidity providers. At the same time, not a single token was reserved for developers, which was unusual for the cryptocurrency market. YFI was added on Uniswap, the price of this token increased by 35,000% in just a week when trading started at Balancer with a price of $3.

YFI is currently ranked #133 on CoinMarketCap, with a price of around $5,000.

After the successful launch of the first project, Andre started developing the next project - "Eminence" a cryptocurrency gaming platform. Before its launch, users had already invested 15 million dollars in the contract, which was soon stolen by hackers who exploited a code vulnerability. In response to the incident, investors threatened Eminence's founder with a lawsuit and demanded their money back. According to the latest data, users have not yet received compensation for losses, and the project itself has not been officially launched.

В октябре 2020 года, Андре Кронье выпускает свой новый проект - "Keep3r Network" децентрализованную площадку для фрилансеров . Начальная цена токена составляла $10, но всего за несколько часов актив вырос на 2000%. В настоящее время цена токена составляет $43, а площадка активно развивается.

But Cronje doesn't stop there - in November, he announces the launch of a new platform that combines futures, swaps, options and loans for DeFi in one place. After this news of work on Deriswap, hackers create a fake DWAP token and manage to steal the money of some gullible investors, causing the development of the platform to stop.

Andre Cronje currently serves as a board member of Fantom Foundation Ltd and Fantom Operations Ltd, which are responsible for the Fantom blockchain ecosystem (FTM) based on directed acyclic graph technology.

One of the highlights of Fantom's 2023 roadmap is gas monetization, which will allow decentralized apps or DApps to generate revenue as an incentive to grow. In addition, Fantom DApps will be able to interact without the need for a wallet that has to pay for gas on its own, thanks to gas subsidies.

Other aspects of "gas reform" include eliminating the distinction between smart contracts and external accounts so that everyone can initiate transactions and pay for gas. Tokens other than FTMs will also be able to be used as payment for gas in the protocol.

As for new developments, Cronje will focus on creating the Fantom virtual machine and a new storage mechanism.