Fantom(FTM) Pumping in Speculation of Andre Cronje’s Return

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Evening

So, as the overall crypto market turning green today, Fantom (FTM) is among the top gainers with a spike of 12% over the past 24hr. Fantom(FTM) price hiked as high as $0.518 before retracting to a current value of $0.45, as per data from coinmarketcap. This marks the 52% increase in last seven days, making Fantom (FTM) one of the top weekly gainers.

So what's driving the latest Fantom (FTM) price action? Reports have been circulation that the Fantom's former star developer Andre Cronje is back to join the project. Andre Cronje and lead developer Anton Nell announced in early March that they are quitting the crypto space for good. Unexpected departure of two lead developers resulted in massive sell off of FTM and YFI
tokens(native token of Fantom defi project associated with AC). Total value locked across various Fantom protocols also plummeted sharply.

Fantom's native stable coin fUSD have been struggling to maintain the peg recently, due to a broader stable coins frenzy initiated by the collapse of Terra's UST. However, Fantom Foundation
have stressed that FUSD is nothing like Terra, instead it is over collateralized against staked FTM.
fUSD is minted by using over collateralized FTM stacking. If FTM price decreases, staked FTM is
auctioned off against fUSD to maintain the peg.

Currently, fUSD is trading at $0.70 as per data by coinmarketcap, way down below its peg. There are rumours that fUSD have got in trouble after Fantom introduced changes to its mechanics. Andre
Cronje was spotted on Github working on fminting protocol, the protocol responsible for
maintaining fUSD peg. Moreover, report by Chinese crypto reporter Colin Wu suggests that Andre Cronje's Fantom wallet have recently received 100 Million FTM in 11 trenches over the past two weeks.

So, Andre Cronje working of fUSD minting contract and also receiving huge sums of FTM in his wallet has encouraged Fantom community to think that the maverick dev is back in the team. Whether Andre Cronje is back full time or just lending hand to Fantom to help its stable coin regain the peg we will finally know, but Fantom community is already cherishing the rumours of return of blockchain's founder as evident from the recent FTM price action.