DeFi 教父 Andre Cronje 回歸! Flying Tulip 融資 2.75 億,推出永久看跌期權

Flying Tulip A round financing is $25.5 million, valuing $1 billion, plus seed round total financing of $225.5 million. Curated has raised 50 million, and CoinList will allocate 200 million next week. 1.36 billion was promised, but only 400 million remained. Core innovation “Perpetual put option”: Burn FT tokens at any time to redeem the principal, at a price of $0.10/coin.

Andre Cronje’s return of capital preservation innovation

Flying Tulip, a new DeFi platform built by crypto veteran Andre Cronje and his team, has raised more funds through a combination of private and public token sales. According to Cronje’s revelation to The Block, Flying Tulip’s Series A private token funding raised $25.5 million from three investors, Amber Group, Fasanara Digital, and Paper Ventures, the same valuation as previous seed rounds, all at $10M (fully diluted).

Flying Tulip previously completed a seed round of funding in September last year, raising $200 million, bringing its total institutional funding to date to $2.255M. For a DeFi protocol that has not yet been officially launched, this scale of financing is extremely rare. Andre Cronje has a legendary status in the DeFi space as the founder of Yearn Finance and a former technical advisor to Fantom. His Yann, which he developed, was a pioneer in yield aggregators and once had over $50 billion in assets under management. This star effect was key to Flying Tulip’s ability to secure significant funding before the product launched.

In addition to institutional funding, Flying Tulip has also captured the attention of a significant number of retail investors due to its ongoing and upcoming public token sale. Cronje said the project has so far raised $50 million through Curated, a DeFi trading platform owned by Impossible Finance, which is part of Impossible Finance’s $200 million investment plan. Additionally, Flying Tulip has earmarked $2M for CoinList, which is set to launch next week.

Cronje said that while the current total soft commitment is about $13.6 billion, assuming that Impossible Finance and CoinList quotas are all used up, the remaining amount is only about $4 billion. He also added that both platforms have received billions of dollars in subscription intentions, which means that once it is open to the public, the remaining quota may soon be filled. This overbooking indicates the high anticipation the market is for Andre Cronje’s new project.

Cronje said that all of Flying Tulip’s funding was conducted at a flat price of $0.10 per FT token and a fully diluted valuation of $10M, with all private and public sale rounds accompanied by full on-chain redemption rights. This practice of “private and public offerings at the same price” is extremely rare in crypto financing, and private investors usually receive significant discounts. Cronje’s equal pricing strategy demonstrates its emphasis on community equity.

Perpetual put option: Exit at any time with capital protection

Flying Tulip refers to this redemption option as a “perpetual put option,” allowing investors to burn their FT token holdings at any time to redeem the principal amount of their invested assets, such as ETH. Cronje has previously stated that the model is designed to provide downside protection while retaining upside gains. This mechanism, unprecedented in DeFi history, fundamentally changes the risk-return structure of token investments.

Traditional token investment is a “one-way bet”, once bought, investors can only hope for a price increase to make a profit, and if the project fails, the token will return to zero, and the money will be lost. Perpetual put options provide a “principal-protected exit channel”, where investors can choose to burn the token to redeem the principal (calculated at $0.10) if the price of FT tokens falls below $0.10, locking in zero losses. If the price of FT tokens rises to $0.50, investors can choose to sell in the market for profits or continue to hold to enjoy the rise.

Cronje previously said: “Perpetual options mean that none of these funds can be used, so the actual amount of money raised is zero.” The implication of this sentence is that since investors can redeem at any time, Flying Tulip cannot dispose of these funds as “defined income”. He also added that the plan is to put up to $10M in potential raised funds into the strategy of on-chain protocols such as Aave, Ethena, and Spark.

He also said at the time that with an annual yield of about 4%, the pool could generate about $4,000 per year to support growth, incentives, and share buybacks. This model of “supporting project operations with pool revenue” is similar to hedge funds or asset managers rather than traditional DeFi protocols. This is the key that sets Flying Tulip apart from other projects: it does not rely on protocol fee income but on asset management income.

Three disruptive effects of perpetual put options

Investor protection: Downside risk capped (maximum loss opportunity cost), upside return unlimited

Financing commitments: The team cannot spend money at will, because the funds can be redeemed at any time, forcing prudent operation

Valuation anchoring: The token price is supported by an implied floor price of $0.10, reducing extreme volatility

This mechanism is also being questioned. Critics argue that if the FT token price remains below $0.10 for an extended period, a large number of redemptions will deplete the pool and the project may collapse. However, Cronje is designed to invest funds in DeFi protocols such as Aave to earn yields, and the system can be maintained as long as the yield covers the redemption demand. It’s the ultimate test of Cronje’s asset management capabilities and market confidence.

An ambitious blueprint for an all-in-one DeFi platform

Flying Tulip is building an on-chain exchange that integrates multiple DeFi functions into a single system. The platform combines spot trading, perpetual futures, lending, and a native stablecoin called ftUSD, with plans to add insurance and options features in the future. According to Cronje, the system aims to adjust trading and lending parameters based on real-time metrics of liquidity, volatility, and usage, rather than relying on fixed rules, as part of its adaptive on-chain risk management approach.

The vision of this “all-in-one DeFi platform” is akin to integrating Uniswap (spot DEX), dYdX (derivatives), Aave (lending), and MakerDAO (stablecoins) into a single protocol. Its advantage lies in the fact that there is no need for cross-platform operations, and users can complete all their DeFi activities in one interface. More importantly, integrated protocols can share liquidity and risk management mechanisms, improving capital efficiency.

Adaptive risk management is a core innovation of Flying Tulip. Traditional DeFi protocols use fixed parameters (such as Aave’s collateralization rate, liquidation threshold) that are determined by governance votes and change slowly. Flying Tulip plans to use algorithms to adjust parameters in real time based on market conditions, such as automatically increasing collateral ratio requirements when an asset’s volatility rises and lowering borrowing rates when liquidity is abundant. This dynamic mechanism theoretically allows for more effective risk management but also increases system complexity.

Key parts of the platform are expected to go live after the completion of Flying Tulip’s token generation event, which is expected to occur after the completion of its pending public token sale. Considering that CoinList will launch next week and subscriptions are hot, Flying Tulip may complete financing in February 2026 and officially launch in Q2.