Cronos has announced the launch of its mainnet beta in a bid to facilitate greater interoperability between the Cosmos and Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) ecosystems.
The release will enable developers to port decentralized applications and smart contracts from Ethereum and EMV-compatible chains to the Cronos network at a low cost and fast speed due to its Inter-Blockchain Communications (IBC) protocol integration. This will offer accessibility to Crypto.com’s 10-million-strong customer base.
Built upon the Cosmos blockchain and powered by Ethermint — a proof-of-authority consensus mechanism — Cronos operates adjacent to the Crypto.org Chain.
Epic Day 1 at @cronos_chain
— Kris | Crypto.com (@Kris_HK) November 8, 2021
✅ Mainnet Launch
✅ https://t.co/pFc4PzqqHR App integrated
✅ https://t.co/pFc4PzqqHR Exchange integrated
✅ DeFi Wallet integrated
✅ Cronos Bridge live
✅ First CRC20 assets created
✅ #CRO ATH
Huge thank you to the entire #CRO community
In the days prior to the launch, the Cronos team published a Medium blog post to explain the intricate process of bridging assets cross-chain — e.g., from Crypto.com’s ecosystem to Cronos or bridging the platform’s native token, CRO, from Crypto.org’s chain to the Cronos chain via IBC.
Cronos announced its testnet service in July this year and has reportedly since facilitated 1.5 million transactions from over 600,000 wallet addresses. At the time, Crypto.com CEO and co-founder Kris Marszalek said he expects an “explosion of activity on Cronos,” as well as pledging to foster the success of developers’ projects from inception to deployment.
This advocacy was demonstrated by the launch of a $100-million grant fund by blockchain accelerator Particle B, designed to equally allocate $1 million to 100 projects deploying their applications on the Crypto.org Chain.
Related: Crypto.com is the #1 app in the Google Play Store in the US
Since its launch, the Cronos ecosystem has attracted over 20 validators, including Bison Trails, a number of prominent decentralized oracles, including Chainlink and Band Protocol, wallets MetaMask and Crypto.com, as well as partnerships with decentralized finance, nonfungible token and gaming platforms and projects.
The Cronos roadmap going into Q1 and Q2 of 2022 outlines intentions to launch the mainnet version of Gravity Bridge, as well as integrate additional IBC channels and IBC tokens whitelist.