"A very pale, chubby, nerdy kid"

In Cape Town, a beautiful place in South Africa, Andre Cronje had a unique upbringing. Born into a traditional family, his father was a natural science teacher and his mother was a librarian. His sister Tanja, who is five years older, remembers him as a "sweet little brother" who loved animals and the outdoors. Although external comments drifted into the family from time to time, which worried Tanja, these did not seem to affect Andre's early life.

Cronje's memories of his childhood, however, are more bitter. He once described himself as "a very pale, chubby, nerdy kid" who was bullied in a school that prided itself on athletics. 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 already discovered a problem he would encounter later in life: No one could keep up with him, not even the teacher.

The road to growth does not seem to be smooth sailing, but every stage is laying the foundation for his future career.

Completed a 3-year computer course in half a year

When the teenage Cronje entered Stellenbosch University to begin studies for a law degree, he was filled with dreams of arguing in court. Soon, however, the dullness and lack of practice in law made him lose interest. The only part of the moot court that excited him was a very small part of the course. This made him rethink his future.

Just when he felt confused in the legal field, an accidental opportunity led him to the world of programming. Cronje started giving his roommate a ride when he needed to take a computer science class at another training institution, Computer Training Institute. Gradually, he became interested in computer science and started taking 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 astonishing speed, eventually becoming an instructor at the Computer Training Institute.

Over the next decade, he worked in software development and engineering management roles across a variety of sectors, including telecommunications, big data, mobile security, and fintech companies. With every project and every role he continues to hone his skills and vision.

The Bitcoin bull run in 2017 caught his attention, and he began to pay attention to blockchain technology. At this time, he was already a senior software developer and had a rich understanding of distributed networks. He began to delve into GitHub repositories and cryptocurrency white papers in his spare time. Gradually, he was attracted by the decentralization concept behind the blockchain and the social changes it could bring. However, he soon realized that the “token culture” in the cryptocurrency field seemed to place too much emphasis on transactional 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, paving the way for his future creation of Yearn Finance.

#Uncle in the field of encryption

As the 2017 Bitcoin bull market came to an end, Andre Cronje’s life changed irrevocably. When his business partner left him for a while on their honeymoon, Cronje began researching blockchain technology on his own, poring over various white papers and GitHub repositories. He recalled: "If he hadn't gotten married and hadn't had his honeymoon, I might still be doing what I've been doing for the past five years." This was undoubtedly an opportunity that gave him the opportunity to be exposed to a completely 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, and enough tools." Judging from his LinkedIn profile, Cronje is older than most in the cryptocurrency space and studied law before learning to code. But once he became interested in coding, he mastered the skill incredibly quickly and quickly found a job in the communications field, familiarizing himself with distributed (though not decentralized) systems.

When cryptocurrencies caught his attention, he started doing code reviews at Crypto Briefing, eventually joining an ICO-funded project called Fantom, a directed acyclic graph (DAG) blockchain from South Korea project. Even then, he was frustrated by “token culture.” He expressed his feelings on the YouTube show "Oh Hey Matty" in March 2019: "Too much time, energy and capital are invested in tokens instead of in products. In the long run, the product will have a negative impact on the tokens." There are benefits to coins.”

However, he took on the challenge of helping people earn more crypto tokens through crypto tokens.

The birth of #iEarn

Cronje recalls that Yearn’s original intention was actually very simple. He has a small stablecoin portfolio of his own and tries to manage it like a savings account. “Ninety percent 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 losses that may arise from non-stablecoin liquidity pools. For him, understanding the cryptocurrency market is too complex and risky.

On February 4, 2020, he wrote an article on Medium about launching iEarn (which later became Y.Earn), describing how he had to personally incur thousands of dollars in expenses to get it online. At the end of the month, he wrote another article describing the various obstacles he encountered during the launch process. Despite the challenges, he found the process "very interesting," with each challenge making the entire ecosystem stronger.

However, reality soon poured cold water on him. At one point, a user suffered losses after exchanging large amounts of assets due to front-end issues. Cronje wrote an article titled "Building in #DeFi Really Sucks," honestly expressing his feelings: "Frankly, it sucks. It's expensive, the community is very hostile, and users feel entitled."

Faced with constant criticism from the community and unrealistic expectations from users, he felt intense pressure. Cronje understood that he didn't want to be "a bank that provides 24/7 technical support and customer support."

#yieldfarming101

The crypto market in 2019 is in a deep bear state, and everyone is only willing to hold stablecoins and wait for bargain hunting. Therefore, an obvious demand is the risk-free appreciation of stablecoins. Initially, only currency markets such as AAVE, Compound and dYdX could provide risk-free returns on lending.

iEarn is making waves for automating revenue optimization. Through yield optimization, users can earn substantial income by investing their cryptocurrencies in DeFi protocols for lending or trading, especially in the more prosperous days of cryptocurrencies. But finding returns from this strategy, known as "yield farming," can be laborious.

Research firm Nansen found that most yield farmers abandon their agreements 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 deal. iEarn automates this task - letting users pool their cryptocurrencies into smart contracts called vaults and rotate them across protocols such as dYdX, Aave and Compound.

Then the liquidity incentive war began. Compound fired first with its COMP token. And the battle for liquidity also begins. Balancer followed with BAL, mStable launched MTA, Fulcrum launched BZX, and Curve is still in the trenches waiting to unveil CRV.

But this makes yield farming more complex, and simple profit switching decisions are no longer sufficient.

Subsequent iterations of the new version renamed iEarn to Y.Earn (from "I earn" to "You earn"), and one month after the release of COMP, Cronje wrote "Income Farming 101" on Medium, excitedly Explains how yield optimization becomes complicated when stablecoin deposits also earn volatility growth tokens.

The liquidity incentive war caused a huge increase in yEarn's locked-up funds, and this was just an appetizer before the meal. What really made yEarn a giant was the release of YFI.

#fairrelease

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 has invented a new way to start a project without capital. He proves that just build something, then build a community, and then use what you build. If you use the income to fund the team, you can launch DeFi projects.”

On July 17, 2020, Cronje revealed plans for his own growth token, YFI. Cronje’s reputation soared because he kept no tokens for himself. On Yearn, anyone who provides liquidity in some pools has the opportunity to earn YFI tokens, with no pre-mining, no reservations, and no advance notification to insiders. Arguably, Bitcoin does the same thing, except it rewards hashing power instead of deposits, but it's still just a matter of devoting resources to the contributions that are most wanted by a particular project.

"Dozens of projects launched by Yearn were inspired to launch in the same way," Lewis said. "YFI's success has significantly lowered the barrier for builders to publish their work."

Kulechov, founder of AAVE, said the team is allocating not just to extract wealth from decentralized applications, but to stay relevant. “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,” he said.

In just two months, TVL has grown rapidly to nearly 1 billion US dollars, and 4 months later it has reached an astonishing 7 billion US dollars. The price of YFI has increased tens of thousands of times, reaching 40,000 US dollars. It was a huge success.

#Eminence Thunderstorm

The success of YFI has made many people rich. As a result, the concept of Cronje has appeared in the market. Even a casual like on Twitter can cause related currencies to rise, 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. One night before going to bed, he posted a vague announcement on Twitter (just a picture of the artwork, no hyperlink).

The morning sunlight filled the room. Cronje woke up from his deep sleep and found news that shocked him - although Eminence did not yet have a user interface or front end, users had already deposited $15 million in DAI in 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 didn't seem to last long. At the same time, another user discovered a vulnerability in the code and stole the entire $15 million. Cronje stared at the screen unwillingly, his heart full of contradictions. Soon after, the mysterious user returned $8 million to a Yearn finance contract. This makes things even more confusing.

Eminence's failure sent huge waves through 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 exploring new things drove him to reveal information about the game on Twitter, sparking a frenzy of searches from fans.

However, a 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." It seems that It indicates his certain uncertainty about the future, and also makes people feel his deep understanding and reflection on open systems. In the exploration and experimentation of digital space, every step he takes seems to show us the infinite possibilities and challenges of the unknown world.

"We give away these worthless tokens for free"

In the ever-changing world of decentralized finance, Andre Cronje is like a twinkling star. His unconventional personality and unpredictable creativity have become a hot topic among people. However, behind every hero there is his unknown monologue, his unspeakable confusion and anxiety.

In that turbulent September, Andre had a live communication with Sergey Nazarov of Chainlink. In that communication, he said seriously: "People are making eye-catching wealth through the new Ponzi scheme we invented. The new scam 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 follows and buys the tokens of the previous wave of people. "

It’s clear from Andre’s words that he is ambivalent about the industry and its culture, even though he has also contributed highly valuable governance tokens to the space. He was well aware of this fact and at the same time puzzled by it. Whenever someone asks him why the YFI token has such a high value, he always chooses to avoid it.

His Twitter profile succinctly illustrates his approach: "I test in prod." "Production environment (Prod)" here refers to the final stage of the software development life cycle. After being polished and improved in multiple test environments, the code will be exposed to the real use environment at this stage. In these few words, Cronje sums up his modus operandi – he rapidly builds software solutions to address emerging challenges in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space, often with the added benefit of caution for those taking risks. A warning to the brave of his project.

He once expressed his philosophy in a tweet: "Disclaimer: When I build software, it is for me. If you do want to interact with it, please be careful, there will be bugs. The interface is to make my life easier Easy. I make mistakes. If you don't understand it, don't use it."

In these few sentences, Cronje opens a window into his worldview and work philosophy. He is not a programmer bound by fixed rules. He has a clear purpose of solving problems, even if this means that his methods may subvert traditional software development principles. In his world, facing problems head-on and responding quickly is more important than wasting time in a perfect testing environment.

If you think about it carefully, this method is surprisingly consistent with Musk's five-step working method. As time goes by, every decision and every action is like a piece of a puzzle, converging into Cronje’s unique picture in the DeFi world. Every twist and turn adds color to his legendary story, and every reflection becomes the driving force for his continuous progress. In the endless digital realm, his journey is far from over.

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