$200 Million Funding, DeFi Pioneer AC Makes High-Profile Comeback with Flying Tulip

Original Title: "The Man is Back! This Time He's Raising One Billion US Dollars"

Original Source: Bitpush News

Just when everyone thought Andre Cronje had faded away from the crypto scene, the legendary figure known as the "Father of DeFi" is back. This time, he is back with a brand new project — Flying Tulip, which today announced a $2 billion funding round and plans to launch a Public Sale of its token.

What's particularly special this time is that the public sale comes with an unprecedented mechanism: users can burn the token at any time and withdraw their principal. This means that participants have a "floor protection" for their downside risk, while the upside potential remains unlimited.

Who is Andre Cronje?

If you experienced the DeFi summer of 2020, you must have heard of him.

Andre Cronje is the founder of Yearn Finance (YFI) — a legendary developer who sparked the DeFi craze solely through code. YFI was once hailed as the "fairest token" because he did not reserve any allocation for himself at the time.

However, after experiencing several project successes, community disputes, and security incidents, Cronje faded from the public eye in 2022. Until today, when he returns with Flying Tulip.

What is Flying Tulip?

Editor's Note: "Flying Tulip" literally means "soaring tulip." The tulip is the most famous symbol of a financial bubble in history (the 17th-century "Tulip Mania" being one of the earliest speculative bubbles).

Cronje named the project Flying Tulip, somewhat self-deprecating and declarative: the crypto world may be like a tulip, but this time, he wants to make it truly "fly." In other words, Flying Tulip aims to transform something that has represented a "bubble" in the past into something more stable, real, and vibrant through on-chain mechanisms.

From the official documentation, Flying Tulip aims to create a fully on-chain financial platform that integrates many functions familiar to crypto users — stablecoins, lending, spot trading, derivatives, options, and insurance — all within one system.

In simple terms, it aims to be an "all-in-one DeFi platform" that allows users to:

· Earn yield by staking assets;

· Borrow assets for leverage;

· Long or short positions;

· Even hedge risks through on-chain insurance.

All of this is done within a unified account system, eliminating the need to switch between different platforms.

A Token Sale with a "Money-Back" Feature

What's most eye-catching this time is Flying Tulip's "Onchain Redemption Right."

Traditionally, once users participate in a token sale, regardless of price fluctuations, their money is locked in.

However, Flying Tulip offers a "programmatic redemption" mechanism—

All participants can destroy their $FT tokens at any time and withdraw their initial investment (e.g., ETH).

The system will automatically return the funds from a separate on-chain reserve pool. This design is somewhat akin to an on-chain insurance mechanism, ensuring that investors won't "lose it all" while still retaining upside potential.

However, it's worth noting that the official statement also mentions that this is not a "guaranteed ROI" or "deposit insurance"—the reserve pool's size is limited, and the execution of the redemption right depends on the adequacy of the funds in the pool.

Funds Not Locked: Growth Through Reinvestment of Returns

In the pitch deck presented to investors, Cronje mentioned that while this design may seem to make funds illiquid, in reality, Flying Tulip plans to deploy these funds into on-chain yield strategies, such as mainstream DeFi protocols like Aave, Ethena, and Spark.

Their goal is to achieve an annualized return of approximately 4%. Based on a planned funding cap of $1 billion, this would generate around $40 million in interest income per year.

This income will be used for:

· Protocol incentives;

· Token buybacks;

· Supporting ecosystem growth and marketing.

In the investor materials, Cronje described it as follows: "We use cyclical income to drive growth and incentives, protect investors' downside with perpetual puts, while retaining the token's unlimited upside potential—forming a self-reinforcing growth flywheel."

Team Has No Reserved Allocation

Another major highlight is that the Flying Tulip team has no initial token allocation. All their revenue comes from the project's actual earnings, used to buy back $FT tokens on the market and release them according to a public plan.

In other words, the team only receives rewards when the protocol is truly profitable and users are genuinely using it. This aligns the team with investors— the more popular the project becomes, the more they earn.

Impressive Investor Lineup, Targeting $1 Billion Fundraising

Flying Tulip has already completed a $200 million private funding round with investors such as:

· Brevan Howard Digital

· CoinFund

· DWF Labs

· FalconX

· Hypersphere

· Nascent

· Republic Digital

· Susquehanna Crypto, and others.

Next, they will conduct a public fundraising round on multiple chains simultaneously, aiming for a total fundraising amount of up to $1 billion.

Summary

The emergence of Flying Tulip is reminiscent of the "code changes finance" era of 2020. The difference is that this time Andre Cronje wants to do more than innovate products but also make DeFi more trustworthy and sustainable. In a DeFi landscape that has undergone a bear market cleanse and a collapse of trust, Cronje's return may not only be a developer's comeback but also a signal of a new DeFi cycle that is poised to be reignited.

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