Flying Tulip · 30

Andre Cronje: DeFi no longer exists, only on-chain finance is left

Comparing news, Andre Cronje, founder of the DeFi platform Flying Tulip and founder of Fantom Network, said that most DeFi protocols are no longer truly decentralized, and only a few niche sectors can still be called DeFi. In his opinion, DeFi has evolved into “on-chain finance” or “open finance.” He pointed out that true DeFi should have characteristics such as decentralization, immutability, and no intermediaries. Currently, intermediaries for most agreements have become companies and assume traditional financial institution functions such as decision makers and risk committees. Cronje said that doesn't mean real DeFi doesn't exist anymore, and some protocols are still innovating. According to DeFilLama data, the total hedging value of DeFi has dropped by more than half in the past 10 months from $167 billion in early October 2025 to $75 billion when the original article was published. The European Central Bank (ECB) analyzed Aave, MakerDAO, Ampleforth, and Uniswap in a working paper published in March and found that based on November 2022 and May 2023 position snapshots, the 100 addresses with the highest governance token holdings in the above agreement all control more than 80% of the token supply. The ECB therefore questioned the extent of decentralization of the DAO in question and whether it should continue to be considered a “fully decentralized” service not subject to the Crypto Asset Market Regulation Act (MiCA). This article is sponsored by GENG, Build Your Fortune on GENG (https://geng.one)

9d agoburnking

Why did S fall more than 97% after AC withdrew from Sonic while FT's valuation reached 1 billion?

Author: Curry, Shenchao TechFlow Original title: AC withdrew from Sonic's board of directors. The Godfather of DeFi once again experienced the experience of breaking out of the shell and doing crypto this year. He probably watched the US stocks reach new highs every day, then open his position in silence for three seconds and then shut it down. BTC has fallen by almost 20% since the beginning of the year, and ETH is even worse, so don't mention copycats. Under this kind of market, a 90% drop in any public chain's token is not news. What's even colder than the price is that people walk away to cool off. On June 19, AC, the godfather of DeFi, left the Sonic Labs board along with two other founding directors. The S token was reported at 0.028 at the time, leaving only a fraction of 1.03 at the beginning of the year. The on-chain TVL dropped from a peak of 1.14 billion in May last year to 20 million. According to DeFilLama's data, 98% has evaporated. There wasn't much reaction from the community when AC left. After all, he left the ring once in 2022 and then came back. The withdrawal statement is also very standard, saying that he is “still optimistic about Sonic,” but that he is no longer involved in business decisions. But what bothers me is the next part. He said the main focus has been on Flying Tulip for the past 18 months. This project raised 200 million dollars in private placement in August last year, with a valuation of 1 billion dollars. In February of this year, another public offering was launched on CoinList. The investors are Brevan Howard, DWF Labs, Susquehanna. In other words, during the period when S dropped from 1.03 to 0.028, AC was busy setting the stage for a new billion dollar project. What's even more impressive is the Flying Tulip token design. Investors with a Tier 1 subscription get an NFT called FTPut, which is essentially a perpetual put option. If they lose money, they can destroy the token at any time and redeem the principal amount at the original price. CoinList's public offering page clearly states that FT (splitable tokens, normal coins) bought on the open market do not have this right; only first-level participants have it. In contrast, the holders of S took over the market and fell to 0.028, which is 0.028. No floors, no redemptions, no one wrote you a way out... AC's exit statement that had nothing to do with me was posted on X, very short, but it seemed like every sentence was over measured. He said he was a technical advisor when he joined Fantom in 2018 and only officially became a director in December 2022. He wasn't the founder of Fantom; he never was; he was just the earliest technical architect. He was responsible for the underlying technology, including later Sonic's core system and cross-chain gateway. Then there is the critical section, which originally stated: “I am responsible for the technical decisions I lead, but I am not the sponsor or patcher of migration, airdrops, tokenomics, and the disposal of old networks.” One sentence removed myself from the fact that the S token dropped 97%. The technology was done by me, and the technology was fine. As to why the coin you bought dropped from one dollar to three percent, that was someone else's decision. The author does not evaluate whether this statement holds true, but admits that the cut is so clean that it is admirable. When most project founders run away, they either pretend not to talk, or send a vague statement full of “us” and “the team,” turning responsibility into a pot of porridge. AC is different; he drew his boundaries of responsibility so accurately that it's hard for you to refute, because he really doesn't care about the token economy. Moreover, he didn't temporarily think of doing this. In March 2022, AC announced its exit from the crypto industry citing regulatory pressure and burnout. At the time, Fantom's TVL evaporated almost one-third within a week, and the community was full of criticism. He quietly came back a few months later, and all he did was reinvent Sonic's technology. He said he was tired when he left, was silent when he came back, and when he left, he said, “I've actually been busy with other things for the past 18 months.” On Sonic's side, the six months before he left, executives changed one after another. CEO Mitchell Demeter, who was just invited in September of last year, resigned in February of this year, and the business leader also joined him. After the CEO left, the board of directors took charge of the board itself for a few months, and now the board of directors has resigned and replaced it with Matt Visser, a new CEO who has never managed the front line of the public chain. Five months, the whole tube...

61d agoburnking#AI #DeFi #Sonic

AC responds to withdrawal from the Sonic Labs board of directors: only responsible for the technical architecture, not participating in token and commercial decisions

According to Twitter, Andre Cronje (AC) issued a statement on June 21 in response to his withdrawal from the Sonic Labs board of directors and clarifying his specific responsibilities within the Fantom and Sonic ecosystem. AC said its resignation from the Sonic Labs board of directors is true, but some outside reports have confused the relationship between its technical role and the project's commercial operations, token economy, and migration decisions. AC stated that he was not the founder of the company or the original token project and initially only participated in the project as a technical advisor. AC further stated that it did not participate in the design, lead, or execution of the FTM to S token migration, is not responsible for the design and management of the Sonic airdrop, and is not responsible for the decision making of the FTM-S token migration and S token economic model. At the same time, it emphasized that it did not support shutting down the ERC-20 version of Ethereum FTM or stopping the Opera network. AC said it will no longer participate in Sonic Labs' business decisions in the future and will focus its main energy on the construction of the Flying Tulip project.

62d ago

Andre Cronje announced his departure: not the founder of Fantom and did not lead FTM's migration and airdrop to S

According to Twitter, Andre Cronje issued a statement on his resignation from the board of directors of Sonic Labs (formerly Fantom), confirming that Sonic Labs' previous announcement was true. The announcement was made because some reports and reviews have confused the boundaries of responsibility between its technical role and all of Fantom's or Sonic Labs' business, token, migration, and operational decisions. Allegedly, Fantom and the original Fantom project existed before he joined. He began participating as a technical advisor in 2018 and was not appointed as a Fantom director until December 13, 2022. Andre Cronje said he was not the founder of the Fantom company or the original token project, but rather the original technical architect of the Fantom operable network, then served as Fantom's director and chief technology officer at Sonic Labs. He claims that he has informally used the term co-founder to describe his basic technical role, but this statement is not accurate because it confuses company formation with technology creation. Its main responsibilities are technical work, including protocol research, architecture, engineering, developer infrastructure, and the design and development of the Sonic network, particularly the Sonic Gateway. At the same time, he emphasized that he did not design, lead, or execute the FTM migration to S, did not design or manage the Sonic airdrop, and was not responsible for making decisions on the Sonic token economic model, token allocation, emissions, or incentive structure. It also stated that it does not support discontinuing the ERC-20 version of Ethereum FTM or shutting down the Opera network; its position is that both should continue to receive support. Once the transition is complete, it will no longer participate in Sonic Labs' business decisions. Its main focus has been on the construction of the Flying Tulip for the past 18 months and will continue to do so.

63d ago

AC and other executives have collectively resigned from the Sonic Labs board of directors to no longer participate in Sonic related business decisions

According to Twitter, Sonic officially announced in X that executives such as Michael Kong, Andre Cronje (AC), and David Richardson have collectively resigned from the board of directors of Sonic Labs and will no longer participate in any of the company's business decisions in the future. AC later issued a letter on X confirming that it had resigned and stated that it would focus its efforts on building the Flying Tulip in the future.

63d ago

AC: FT only triggered around $50,000 in liquidations during its first massive retracement, far lower than the traditional LTV model

Comparing news, Sonic co-founder Andre Cronje said that during the period when the derivatives platform FT (FlyingTulip) experienced a large-scale market retracement for the first time, the equity account lending model only generated a liquidation scale of about 50,000 dollars. Due to the use of a net risk calculation rather than a collateral model, and the soft settlement mechanism in place, the average settlement amount for a single transaction is only $200 to $2000. Andre Cronje pointed out that if a traditional borrowing system based on loan value ratio (LTV) is used, the scale of settlement under current market fluctuations may increase 10 to 20 times. He said that the equity account model can achieve net risk management and reduce market impact through a soft settlement mechanism, thereby bringing a safer, less volatile and less discounted lending experience.

77d ago

Andre Cronje: DeFi is no longer decentralized, and the industry is divided over “fusing mechanisms” on safety routes

Comparing news, Andre Cronje said that most of the current decentralized finance (DeFi) agreements no longer conform to “DeFi in the strict sense of the word,” but are closer to commercial systems operated by teams, and have caused industry divisions over whether “circuit breakers (circuit breakers)” should be introduced to deal with the risk of attacks. In an interview, Andre Cronje pointed out that in the early days, DeFi was centered around immutable smart contracts, but now many protocols rely on upgradable contracts, multi-signature permissions, off-chain infrastructure, and manual operation and maintenance processes, and have essentially transformed from an “immutable public product” to a “profitable business that can operate.” He said that in the context of many recent security incidents, including about US$280 million and US$293 million DeFi attacks, industry risks have expanded from simple smart contract vulnerabilities to “Web2 risks” such as infrastructure, permission control, and social engineering attacks. For risk management, Flying Tulip, where Andre Cronje is located, recently introduced a fusing mechanism to delay or queue withdrawals in the event of abnormal outflows of funds to provide an emergency response window of about 6 hours to prevent systematic crowding and further losses. However, the mechanism has also sparked controversy. Michael Egorov believes that fusing mechanisms may introduce a new centralized attack surface, and if controlled by signers or administrators, may instead become a new source of security breaches or freeze risks. He emphasized that DeFi design should minimize human intervention rather than adding human control nodes. Industry analysis points out that this debate essentially reflects that DeFi is gradually shifting from an ideal model of “code is the law” to a realistic architecture of “hybrid governance+operational control,” while security boundaries are being redefined. This article is sponsored by GENG, Build Your Fortune on GENG (https://geng.one)

115d agoburnking

Andre Cronje's DeFi Platform Flying Tulip Launches Withdrawal Fusing Mechanism

According to Cointelegraph, according to Cointelegraph, Flying Tulip, a decentralized finance platform founded by Andre Cronje, has launched a withdrawal fuse mechanism, which can delay or queue up withdrawals when abnormal funds flow out to limit potential losses and buy time for the team to investigate. The mechanism works differently in different products: in Perpetual PUT products, withdrawals may be rolled back and users need to try again later; in ftUSD, withdrawals will enter a queue and can be claimed after a delay. Flying Tulip said the mechanism uses a “fail-open” design, meaning that transactions can continue to be executed when the security mechanism fails. This article is sponsored by GENG, Build Your Fortune on GENG (https://geng.one)

121d agoburnking

Andre Cronje: Aave has no subsidized user loss mechanism and has withdrawn ETH to fund management encapsulation contracts

According to Twitter, Andre Cronje, co-founder of Sonic Labs and founder of Flying Tulip, wrote on the X platform that his team is continuing to investigate the L0/rsetH incident. Preliminary reports indicate that approximately $200 million of rSSeth was stolen, or due to private key leaks or misconfiguration, and related assets were then placed in Aave collateral to lend ETH (due to insufficient RsETH liquidity). Andre Cronje pointed out that the affected positions are still technically backed by collateral, but in the event of bad debts, Aave's token mechanism and security module will absorb risk as the first line of defense. However, Aave has no mechanism to subsidize users' losses; otherwise, it may cause a rush. Currently, Aave holds about 7 billion US dollars of ETH and a withdrawal scale of about 100 million US dollars, so the overall impact of this incident is limited. Furthermore, in order to prioritize user liquidity, Flying Tulip has withdrawn all ETH in Aave to its fund management package contract. The move was made because Aave's available liquidity has fallen below the minimum threshold set by it.

125d ago

Data: Q1 2026 crypto startups raise nearly $5 billion, predicting the market to be the biggest winner

Comparative news, according to DL News quoting DeFilLama data, crypto startups raised nearly 5 billion US dollars in the first quarter of 2026, down 16% year on year, but the investment ecosystem continues to evolve, and capital flows have clearly shifted from speculative tokens to practical circuits such as payment and transaction infrastructure. Among them, it is predicted that the market circuit will be led by more than $1.7 billion, with payment and transaction infrastructure drawing in $735 million and $423 million respectively. Top non-crypto institutions such as Sequoia Capital, Founder's Fund, Bain Capital, and Alibaba are also speeding up their entry. The top ten Q1 financing projects are as follows: • Kalshi: $1 billion, valued at $22 billion, led by Coatue Management, CFTC regulatory forecasting market leader • Polymarket: $600 million, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) funding, leading decentralized forecasting market platform • Rain: $250 million Series C, valued at nearly $2 billion, led by Iconiq Capital, stablecoin payment infrastructure • BitGo: 2.13 $100 million, NYSE IPO, valued at over $2 billion, crypto custodian • Flying Tulip: $206 million, public token sale, led by DeFi architect Andre Cronje, integrated transactions/lending/insurance • Whop: $200 million, Tether.

140d ago