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The founder of Yearn
Finance, Andre Cronje, has seen a fair share of criticism lately as he
deployed some smart contracts that ended up losing users’ money. Cronje
defended himself in a blog post and explained why he believes he shouldn’t be held responsible for those who “ape in” his testing contracts.

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Cronje
will often place large disclaimers urging people to treat them with
caution and not just go in because he built it. Little can be done to
prevent this, given the permissionless nature of these products.
Nevertheless, Cronje was sometimes criticized for not deploying
contracts on testnets, where no real money could be lost. His “I test in
prod” adage also turns some people away, as it seems to imply a
careless attitude toward security.

Cronje explained that he does
in fact test software in multiple stages. “[The statement] exists to
deter people from just using systems without investigation. It does not
mean that I don’t test,” he wrote.

Before a contract makes it to
the mainnet, it goes through a rigorous process of unit, interaction and
composite testing. These make sure that each part of the contract is
working as intended, down to individual functions.

However, a key
part of that process is testing in production to achieve the most
realistic conditions. He explained that the mainnet provides the best
possible tools and conditions, which cannot easily be replicated
locally. “I have discovered issues on mainnet I never encountered
locally, I have failed to replicate mainnet systems locally, and I have
encountered errors locally that I can’t replicate on mainnet,” he
explained.

Furthermore, there are many versions of existing
products like Yearn Finance that were deployed to the mainnet without
being discovered. “There are over 22 ‘yearns’ on ETH mainnet. There are
over 5 ‘YFIs’ on ETH mainnet,” he added. In a conversation with
Cointelegraph, Cronje said that the reason why his primary projects were
never hacked was: “Ironically, because I test in prod.” With this
approach, he says he is able to iterate over the real issues that come
up, instead of relying on auditors to review pre-production code. “And
if people just wait till I actually launch the product, all will be
fine,” he added.

One case of people getting burned on Cronje’s smart contracts involved one of these testing playgrounds, which were still at least a few weeks away from public release.

Addressing
these issues, Cronje noted, “I don’t build for speculators.” While he
said that he could not rationally understand the people who rushed into
his test environments, he seems to have conceded that a more pragmatic
approach may be needed. “I have more thinking to do on this,” he
concluded.

In the meantime, he pledged to not use his well-known
deployer address to conduct further tests. Given the number of previous
contracts that went undiscovered, this may be enough to prevent further
unfortunate occurrences.

The post follows another instance of people losing money over one of his contracts, an unnamed project
often referred to by its token ticker, LBI. The contract was deployed
on the mainnet on Oct. 13 and immediately triggered a torrent of people
putting their money into it, with many calling it “the new YFI.”

It was not the new YFI. Source: ChartEx

The
token’s price fell immediately after, with many stories of people
losing small fortunes over it. A barrage of criticism against Cronje was
levied by many market participants, blaming him for the loss. It’s
worth noting that this price decline was not the result of any kind of
malfunction, as the contracts themselves were not compromised.