Andre Cronje on DeFi, Sonic Network, and His New Apps
Andre Cronje's makes a reappearance to discuss his story, what he's building and the state of DeFi today
Welcome to a blast from the past.
Imagine this:
You're on your laptop in summer 2020, when you see a message from a friend "new yield farm just opened called Yearn, you can only farm it for one week with DAI."
You ape in. The rest is history, and DeFi was (more or less) born.
That was the early stages of Andre's journey into DeFi. For his latest reappearance, we will take you on a deep dive into his journey, what he feels about DeFi today, the new apps, and of course Sonic - a revamped approach to Fantom that brings high throughput, developer-first incentives, and a unique fee redistribution model to the DeFi space.
At the core of Sonic’s approach is a shift in value distribution. Rather than centralizing fees with validators or sequencers, Sonic redirects 90% of fees back to the DApps that generate them. This means developers can capture more value, and users benefit from a faster, lower-cost environment.
We argued whether or not this was bullish for appchains or not, following his written piece "to appchain or not".
Moreover, Andre introduced Carmen, an EVM-compatible database built to optimize performance across L1 and L2 ecosystems. We also talked about some of his new app ideas, such asWitnessNet, a ZK-powered Oracle network that aims to bring data verification to new levels by authenticating HTTPS data origins onchain, undercollateralized lending, onchain credit, and a new gamified DeFi protocol.
Today's pod was one for the books. Enjoy.
The Rollup