Andre Cronje, one of the Phantom developers, claimed last year that he is no longer working on the altcoin project. However, the famous developer now says that this is purely for show.
Andre Cronje: I have never cut ties with the altcoin project!
As you follow on Kriptokoin.com, in early November, controversial crypto entrepreneur Andre Cronje returned to the Phantom project after a long hiatus. At that time, signs of this increased the altcoin price by 20%. But he himself claims that he never really left. Speaking on The Scoop podcast, Cronje made these interesting statements:
My distance from the Phantom was only in the public perspective. I was getting so much bad news at the time that I thought it would negatively affect Phantom.
Cronje said she has been working full-time at the Phantom Foundation since 2019. “You can talk to anyone in the organization. They all know that I’m still there, still working. I was still doing my daily work,” he said.
Controversial test practices and comeback story!
It looks like Andre Cronje left the Phantom Foundation in March 2022. In the process, he stopped contributing to the so-called DeFi space and crypto in general. This caused a decrease in the price of FTM at that time. No specific reason was given for this separation. However, Cronje has come under fire many times in the past for its tendency to “test in production”, i.e. live stream unaudited code while creating the code. Several times, crypto watchers voluntarily entered his contracts before a mistake or other problem caused them to lose their funds.
“I thought it would do more reputation damage than harm,” he said of distancing himself from the project. Cronje added that it was Michael Kong, CEO of the Phantom Foundation, who eventually convinced him to make a public comeback. In this context, Cronje said, “After several months of wear and tear, I finally gave up. Then I decided to confess. But this was not actually a way of going and returning. It was just a public distance that I thought was better for the project at the time,” he explained.
The latest development comes after Cronje’s involvement in Multichain, another project that suffered a major hack that resulted in the loss of $126 million worth of assets. In a statement regarding the incident, Cronje said the team is investigating recovery options. It also acknowledged that it has taken measures to restore users’ assets and trust in the protocol.
In light of Andre Cronje’s statements and renewed commitment to the Phantom Foundation, the crypto community awaits further updates on the project’s development and future contributions from the controversial entrepreneur.