DeFi Collateral Tanks as Key Developers Bail Out

Key Insights:

• Yearn Finance founder Andre Cronje quits the crypto space.
• Fantom and Solidly TVL and token prices dump.
• DeFi collateral continues to decline on cooling crypto markets.

Collateral in decentralized finance (DeFi) projects is referred to as total value locked (TVL), a measure that has been attributed to the overall health of the ecosystem.

That figure, along with DeFi token prices, has nosedived today following the announcements that some prominent figures in the industry are throwing in the white towel on their projects.

According to industry tracker DeFi Llama, the TVL across all platforms has declined around 3% on the day resulting in a loss of around $15 billion over the past week.

The total figure is now around $193 billion, down 24.6% from its December 2 all-time high of $256 billion. Chinese industry analyst Colin Wu observed that some platforms were hemorrhaging collateral much faster than others.

According to DeFi Llama data, in the past 24 hours, the TVL of Fantom network dropped by 21.16%, of which Solidly dropped by 44.61% and Solidex dropped by 45.22%. pic.twitter.com/3AkvH6RCXD

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) March 7, 2022

It should be noted that declines in DeFi TVL are often related to declines in the prices of the underlying tokens, and crypto markets have been down-trending for the past three months.

Cronje Quits

Often dubbed the “godfather of DeFi,” Yearn Finance founder Andre Cronje has deactivated his Twitter account and made an abrupt exit from the space.

Cronje’s colleague from the Fantom Foundation, Anton Nell, confirmed the departure in a tweet on March 6, stating:

“Andre and I have decided that we are closing the chapter of contributing to the defi/crypto space. There are around ~25 apps and services that we are terminating on 03 April 2022.”

He added that this was not a “knee jerk reaction to the hate received from releasing a project, but a decision that has been coming for a while now.”

Cronje has been an instrumental figure in the DeFi sector over the past couple of years with new and innovative ideas and projects. The crypto community is largely split over his decision to quit, with some siding with him and offering support while others are claiming it is a rug pull (when project owners or developers disappear and dump on investors after selling their tokens).

DeFi Tokens Tanking

Unsurprisingly, Yearn Finance tokens (YFI) have tanked 10% on the day in a fall to $18,094 at the time of writing. The native token for the DeFi yield aggregator is currently down 80% from its May 12 all-time high of $90,786, according to CoinGecko.

Fantom’s FTM token has been smashed 19.3% on the day, falling back to $1.34. FTM is now 61% down from its October 28 all-time high of $3.26.

Total value locked for Fantom, an Ethereum (ETH) scaling blockchain co-developed by Cronje, has plummeted 21% overnight. Solidly, another Cronje production has lost 68% in TVL over the past couple of days.