Flying Tulip founder Andre Cronje contends that DeFi protocols have evolved into a new financial paradigm of “onchain finance,” but have sacrificed some of their inherent immutability and decentralization. Most decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols are no longer truly decentralized, according to Andre Cronje, founder of DeFi platform Flying Tulip and creator of Fantom Network. “I don’t think DeFi exists anymore outside of those very small niches,” Cronje told Cointelegraph during Thursday’s Chain Reaction X Spaces show. He argued that “true DeFi” needs to be decentralized, immutable and without an intermediary, adding: “That statement isn’t really true for pretty much any other protocols running today.” Read more
Flying Tulip’s Andre Cronje says circuit breakers can give teams time to respond during abnormal outflows, while Curve’s Michael Egorov warns they may create new human vulnerabilities. Andre Cronje says much of decentralized finance is “no longer DeFi” in the strict sense, as builders debate whether circuit breakers and other emergency controls are now necessary to protect users from exploits. The Flying Tulip founder told Cointelegraph in an interview that many protocols are no longer immutable public goods, but rather “teams running for-profit businesses” with upgradeable contracts, offchain infrastructure and operational controls. That shift changes the security model, he said. While early DeFi protocols were mostly defined by immutable smart contracts, newer systems often depend on proxy upgrades, multisigs, infrastructure providers, admin processes and human response teams, according to Cronje. Read more
Flying Tulip said its withdrawal safeguard is designed to fail open, while a status page lets users monitor the system in real time. Flying Tulip, a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform founded by DeFi developer Andre Cronje, has added a circuit breaker that can delay or queue withdrawals during abnormal outflows, as April DeFi losses climbed amid a string of major exploits. According to Flying Tulip’s documentation, the mechanism is designed to slow funds leaving the protocol if outflow capacity is exceeded, giving the team time to investigate suspicious activity and limiting how much an attacker could drain in a worst-case scenario. Flying Tulip said the circuit breaker works differently across products. In the first version of the circuit breaker, used in its Perpetual PUT product, withdrawals can revert and users must retry later. In the second version, used in Flying Tulip’s stable asset and settlement currency, ftUSD, withdrawals are queued and become claimable after a delay instead of being rejected ...