Fantom Price Surges 20% amid Andre Cronje's Unexpected Comeback

Fantom (FTM) price has seen a bullish trend, which is worth analyzing. At the time of writing, Fantom's price was trading at $0.261536 with a 24-hour trading volume of $407,044,934, as per CoinMarketCap. Data shows that the token was up 20.28% in the last 24 hours and ranked #67, with a live market cap of $665,610,896.

Based on the below chart analysis, Fantom crossed the $3 threshold twice in 2021 while trading at $0.2-$0.4 at the beginning of the year.

During that year, FTM recorded a 10x growth, setting two all-time highs at almost the same level in a span of 12 months. The first highs were witnessed at the time of the overall market growth in February and May. The second highs were seen in September 2021 and January 2022, when Fantom was worth $3.16 and $3.3, respectively, when the crypto market recorded its peak growth.

Numerous developments contributed to the growth of Fantom's value throughout 2021. In May last year, the Fantom Foundation supported a few native projects, such as SpiritSwap and SpookySwap, as part of the Fantom ecosystem.

Furthermore, several protocols, like Geist Finance, Scream, Reaper Farm, RoboVault, and others, appeared within the Fantom ecosystem during that year. Also, Fantom blockchain started partnering with multiple projects from different fields, such as Coti (Payment), Suterusu (Privacy), V-ID (Identity), Travala (Travel), and others.

Fantom's price evolved and achieved its latest all-time high point in 2021; so far, the record has never been surpassed.

As it can be seen in the chart, since the early part of this year, the token experienced some significant challenges, which pointed to why it cooled its steam. On 10 March, Fantom announced the departure of one of its key developers, Andre Cronje, from the project as of the end of March 2022. Blockchain.News further reported the matter. As a result, the update caused the price of FTM to drop by over 20% over 24 hours and trade low.

Besides that, Fantom prices also have been trading low this year due to the wider crypto winter that started seriously at the end of April.

But for the last 30 days, Fantom's price went up by 19.49%, 21.25% surged for the last seven days, and 24% up over the last 24 hours. Market report associates the latest bullishness with rumours that DeFi trailblazer Andre Cronje is returning to the industry. The total volume of assets locked in Fantom also rose 3.10% in the last 24 hours to $517.22 million, thus reacting positively to the speculation.

Rumours about Cronje's return started last week when he published a medium post talking about various matters that led to the recent market downturn. The DeFi developer also used that opportunity to call for more regulatory reforms within the sector.

However, the crypto community members were divided based on the post, with some arguing that the publishing was not from Cronje. But early yesterday, Cronje updated his LinkedIn profile to read that he is the Vice President of Memes at the Fantom Foundation, and stated he started the position this month. He also shared a tweet via his verified Twitter account that showed he was back in the industry. All these confirm the speculation that Cronje has finally returned.

Cronje is widely regarded as the father of DeFi for his various contributions to the space. He is credited with developing several projects such as Yearn Finance, Keep3rV1, PowerPool, SushiSwap, PowerPool, CreamV2, and many more. He was Chairman of the Fantom Foundation and served as the project's technical advisor.