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Home ยป Profiles ยป Who is Andre Cronje? Founder of Yearn.finance

Who is Andre Cronje? Founder of Yearn.finance

andre cronje yearn.finance founder profile

Andr Cronje is a South African software developer and entrepreneur. He is most known for creating the DeFi protocol Yearn.finance (YFI), which is one of the leading protocols in the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) space.

Background of Andre Cronje

Cronje was born in Cape Town South Africa. After completing school he went on to complete an LLB degree from Stelenbosch University. He has also studied computer science, project management, problem-solving, etc from the CTI Education Group in 2005. One of the most surprising things about him is that he complete his computer science degree in just 1.5 years, a degree which typically takes 3 or more years to finish.

This amazing achievement earned him a job as a tutor at his alma mater. Between 2005 to 2006, he worked there teaching different subjects which include Information Technology, Graphics Designing, and Psychology-Law.

In 2008 he left this job to work at mobile operator Vodacom in the technical team. In 2009 he was offered the role of Chief Technical Officer at the International Mobile Protection Initiative, which he graciously accepted.

Later on in his career, he worked at different companies but the shift to blockchain technology happened when he was offered the role of blockchain protocol advisor at BitDiem. Moreover he worked on several other projects in his career which include Fantom Foundation Crypto Briefing and Fusion Foundation.

In 2017, he founded the software development firm Least Authority Solutions, which specialized in decentralized applications and smart contracts development.

Yearn.finance and other projects

The world came to know of Andre Cronje when he created Yearn.finance and its native YFI token in 2019.

Yearn.finance is built on the Ethereum Blockchain and is one of the leading protocols in the DeFi space. Its token, YFI, is a governance token that is used for voting purposes to make any change to the Yearn.finance Platform. The protocol was designed to help users maximize their returns on their cryptocurrency investments. It does this by allowing users to easily switch between different cryptocurrency investments, and by providing automated yield-farming strategies.

He has been involved in the development of several other blockchain projects, including MakerDAO, Lido Staking, 0x and Uniswap. Andre has also built and contributed to the Fantom, a decentralized directed acyclic graph (DAG) network with smart contract functionality that helps developers to build secure dApps with minimal friction.

He is the founder and CEO of WBTC Network, a decentralized exchange for Bitcoin and Ethereum. In addition, he created the Ethereum-based game Axie Infinity, a digital pet game where users can collect, breed, and battle virtual creatures.

This makes him one of the most famous figures who have helped shape DeFi and Web3.

Achievements and efforts

  • He was named by Forbes as one of the Top 10 Crypto Influencers of 2020.
  • He was also named by Crypto Magazine as one of the Top 25 Most Influential People in Crypto.
  • Andre received the Security Token Award for โ€œIndustry Influencer of the Yearโ€ in 2020.
  • He was also featured in the Financial Times, CNBC, and Bloomberg.
  • In 2020, he was named one of the “50 Most Influential Blockchain People” by Coindesk.

Due to the rise of the platform and his other major contributions and ventures, Andre Cronje’s net worth is around $1 billion.