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Andre Cronje says DeFi is largely gone, replaced by onchain finance
Cronje also pointed to a collapse in DeFi total value locked, which fell to $75 billion from $167 billion in early October 2025.
Flying Tulip founder Andre Cronje said most decentralized finance, or DeFi, no longer exists in the way the term was originally defined, arguing that the space has shifted into what he calls onchain finance while losing some immutability and decentralization, according to remarks he made during Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction X Spaces on Thursday.
Cronje said he sees DeFi only in small niches, adding that builders have increasingly debated whether emergency controls such as circuit breakers are needed to protect users from exploits.
He cited data from DefiLlama showing DeFi total value locked has more than halved over the past 10 months, dropping to $75 billion from $167 billion in early October 2025.
Cronje’s view was also framed alongside questions from the European Central Bank, which has examined whether DAOs remain sufficiently decentralized to stay outside regulation, including a March working paper that found top governance token holders controlled more than 80% of supply across major protocols based on holdings snapshots from late 2022 to mid 2023.