DeFi deja vu as another stealth Andre Cronje project launches

Yearn Finance creator Andre Cronje quietly published his third protocol to GitHub since August on October 19, dubbed Keep3r Network. Despite the lack of a formal launch announcement, and Keep3r’s documentation stating the protocol is in beta, over-exuberant investors once again rushed to invest into the project — many of whom have already incurred losses.

A handful of opportunistic traders and their bots quickly injected money into the platform and began trading the token on Uniswap, causing its price to spike from $1 to $2,000 on thin volume, before the token dumped back below $100 as Cronje redeployed Keep3r’s contracts multiple times while testing the code. Thankfully, KPR only attracted a few thousand dollars in volume, unlike Cronje’s most recent experiment, Eminence — which was completely drained of $15 million while Cronje was sleeping and unaware that his followers rushed to invest in the protocol.

Timeline of Uniswap