FTM bounces as Fantom CEO ‘clarifies’ Anton Nell and Andre Cronje’s exits

Fantom (FTM) plunged more than 16% on Sunday, dropping as lows as $1.38 as negative sentiment cut across the decentralised finance (DeFi) market.

The sharp decline was triggered by an unexpected tweet from Anton Nell, a high-profile developer and Fantom Foundation advisor.

Andre Cronje and Anton Nell ‘shocker’

In a brief thread on Twitter, Nell said that he and legendary DeFi developer Andre Cronje had come to a decision about their future engagements in the Fantom ecosystem and overall decentralised finance (DeFi) space. 

According to Nell, he and Cronje had finally decided to quit as crypto developers, listing several projects that they would no longer be involved with.

The news saw Fantom (FTM) plummet alongside Yearn.finance (YFI), a project closely associated with Cronje. YFI tanked more than 10% on Sunday.

But in the last few hours, both tokens have bounced higher, with FTM price up more than 2% and YFI +6%. 

For Fantom, the upside comes after the CEO of Fantom Foundation Michael Kong issued a statement ‘clarifying’ that the crypto community likely misunderstood Nell’s message.

In reassurance to the Fantom community, Kong noted on Monday:

“As many of you are aware, Anton, who works with Andre, tweeted that they were “terminating” 25 projects. This was misunderstood. They are “terminating” their involvement, but handing over anything they run to the existing teams.”

Fantom and YFI has ‘hundreds of developers’

Kong has reiterated that Fantom and Yearn.finance will be okay even with the exit of the iconic developers.

He believes this is certainly the case given the Fantom ecosystem currently has “hundreds of developers” working on multiple applications. According to him, these developers have been doing a great job and would continue to do so despite the turn of events.

Speaking of Yearn.finance, Kong noted that the project “has been around for years.” In addition, it has an existing team that will continue to work on it as before.

He has the same view of Multichain and Solidex, two of the largest projects on the Fantom chain. Like YFI’s, these projects have been teams that have worked on them for years. He assured the community that these and many other projects in the ecosystem that are largely associated with Nell and Cronje won’t be ‘terminated.’

Echoing Kong’s viewpoint was Year.finance developer pseudonymously known as banteg. As the YFI token tanked, the developer commented:

“People burying YFI, you do realize Andre hasn’t worked on it for over a year? And even if he did, there are 50 full-time people and 140 part-time contributors to back things up.”

People burying YFI, you do realize Andre hasn’t worked on it for over a year? And even if he did, there are 50 full-time people and 140 part-time contributors to back things up.

— banteg (@bantg) March 6, 2022

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