"Father of DeFi" Andre Cronje makes a comeback: presenting $200 million Flying Tulip, plans to launch $1 billion FT Token public sale.

The legendary developer Andre Cronje, once hailed as the "Father of DeFi", is returning to the crypto world with a new project called Flying Tulip after a two-year hiatus. The project has completed $200 million in private sale financing and plans to launch a public sale of tokens with a target of up to $1 billion. The core innovation of Flying Tulip lies in its "Onchain Redemption Right" mechanism: allowing users to destroy $FT tokens at any time to reclaim their principal investment. This design offers participants unprecedented "bottom-line protection" while maintaining unlimited upside potential. The project aims to create a "one-stop DeFi platform" entirely on-chain and plans to invest public sale funds into mainstream DeFi protocols to earn returns, forming a "self-reinforcing growth flywheel." The team has given up initial token distribution, with revenues relying entirely on protocol buybacks, tightly linking their interests with user growth.

The Return of DeFi Legends and the Meaning of "Flying Tulip"

Andre Cronje is the founder of Yearn Finance (YFI), and his "code-only" spirit defined the DeFi summer of 2020. After going through a series of project ups and downs, he faded out in 2022, and now he reappears with Flying Tulip.

• Project Name Interpretation: "Tulip" symbolizes a frenzied speculative bubble in financial history. Cronje named his project Flying Tulip, which is both a self-deprecating nod to the volatility of the crypto world and a declaration: he aims to make things that once represented "bubbles" more stable and sustainable through on-chain mechanisms.
• The vision of Flying Tulip: This project is committed to building a one-stop financial platform on-chain, integrating all core DeFi functions such as stablecoins, lending, spot trading, derivatives, options, and insurance, allowing users to perform all operations within a unified account system.

Disruptive Mechanism: Public Sale of Tokens with "Put Protection"

The public sale of Flying Tulip's Token introduces the "on-chain redemption right", which is a disruptive innovation to the traditional token issuance model:

• Redemption right: Users participating in the public sale can choose to destroy their held $FT Token at any time, thereby reclaiming their initial invested capital (such as ETH).
• Risk protection: This mechanism provides a programmed downside risk floor, ensuring that investors do not "lose everything," while retaining the full potential for the Token price to rise infinitely.
• Mechanism Execution: The system will automatically return redeemed funds from a separate on-chain reserve pool.
• Key reminder: Despite this protection, the official reminder is that this mechanism is not a "guarantee of capital recovery" or "deposit insurance," and its execution capability depends on the adequacy of funds in the reserve pool.

"Self-Reinforcing Growth Flywheel": Driving Growth with Revenue

The Flying Tulip project plans to use the funds raised from the public sale to create a sustainable "growth flywheel" that addresses the contradiction between fund locking and growth driving:

• Capital Utilization: The public sale funds (targeting $1 billion) are not idle, but will be invested in mainstream DeFi protocols such as Aave, Ethena, and Spark for on-chain yield strategies, aiming to achieve an annualized return of approximately 4%.
• Yield Reinvestment: Calculated based on a cap of 1 billion dollars, this can generate approximately 40 million dollars in interest income each year. This income will be used for:

1. protocol incentive;

2. Buyback $FT Token;

3. Support ecosystem growth and market promotion.

• Cronje's philosophy: He summarizes it as: "Driving growth and incentives with cyclical returns, protecting investors' downside with perpetual puts, while retaining the potential for unlimited upside of the Token."

Aligning Team Interests with Investors

Unlike many projects, the Flying Tulip team has not reserved any initial Token allocation for themselves, which is another highlight worth noting in the Decentralized Finance field:

• Sources of income: The team's income will come entirely from the real profits generated by the protocol, which will be used to buy back $FT Token on the market, and then released according to the public plan.
• Highly bound: This mechanism ensures that the economic interests of the team are closely linked to the success of the protocol and the activity of users. That is, the more popular the project is, the more users it has, and the more profit the protocol makes, the more the team can be rewarded.

The Luxurious Capital Lineup and Market Significance

Flying Tulip has completed a private sale financing of $200 million, attracting a luxurious line-up of investors including Brevan Howard Digital, CoinFund, DWF Labs, and Nascent, with a goal of raising a total of $1 billion.

The return of Flying Tulip, along with its innovations in redemption rights and yield-driven growth, symbolizes Andre Cronje's attempt to establish a new cycle that is more trustworthy and sustainable after the trust crisis in DeFi. This is undoubtedly a strong signal sent to the market.

Conclusion

Flying Tulip is not only Andre Cronje's comeback work, but also a philosophical reflection and mechanism correction on the core flaws of DeFi. By granting the Token "on-chain redemption rights", it greatly reduces the risks for early participants and attempts to solve the chronic issue of sustainability in DeFi with an innovative "growth flywheel" model. After the reshuffling of the bear market in 2022, whether Cronje's return and his focus on "bottom line protection" can successfully reignite the community's trust and lead DeFi into a healthier and more mature era is something we should continue to pay attention to.