What Is Cronos (CRO)?

As the crypto ecosystem expands, there is an increasing need to attract new users by offering them financial tools (and others) that are user-friendly and able to simplify the intricate universe of DeFi. Blockchain technology is here to stay, and is developing at high rates, managing to create increasingly interesting and innovative products. This technology is intended to serve a further billion Web3 users and assist them in realizing the full potential of self-custody of their digital assets, as well as accelerating the global adoption of cryptocurrencies. One of the key points to allow faster mass adoption of cryptocurrencies by retail users is to encourage the development of blockchains that are interoperable with each other and above all, easy to use and scalable.

Cronos’s goal is precisely to massively scale the DeFi, GameFi, and overall Web3 by providing the possibility to instantly port apps and crypto assets from other blockchains while benefiting from low transaction fees, high throughput, and fast transaction finality.
To better understand what Cronos is, we need to go a little back in time.
It all started in late 2018, when the today’s Crypto.com brand, renamed from Monaco Technology GmbH, launched its cryptocurrency exchange and blockchain, Crypto.org, which operates as an independent organization supporting the project.

Crypto.org Chain is a public, open-source, and permissionless blockchain with high speed and low fees. It has been designed to help mass adoption of blockchain technology through use cases like Payments, DeFi, and NFTs. In a nutshell, Crypto.org Chain powers Crypto.com’s payment solutions by enabling transactions worldwide between people and businesses. In fact, Crypto.com offers many financial instruments through its crypto exchange, payment services through an app and a Visa card, decentralized finance options, and non-fungible tokens.

Later, it was decided to create another blockchain that, running parallel to the Crypto.org blockchain, aimed to massively scale the DeFi, GameFi, and overall Web3. This new project, launched on November 8th 2021, is called Cronos.

Cronos Chain, is a fully EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) and IBC (Inter-Blockchain Communication) compatible blockchain for developers to build and create dApps. It was designed to interoperate with both, the Ethereum and Cosmos ecosystems, by allowing users to import cryptocurrencies from the Ethereum, Cosmos, and other chain families into Cronos, and rapidly port apps & smart contracts from Ethereum and EVM-compatible chains. Its main features are high transaction throughput, fast transaction finality, and low transaction fees. The reason this new blockchain was created is to allow decentralized applications (dApps) and smart contracts to become potentially more affordable, less carbon intensive, and more user-friendly, considering that those running on Ethereum are not affordable for everyone (in economic terms).

How Does Cronos Work? Ethermint and Tendermint Core’s Proof of Stake (PoS)

It can be summarized based on the information already covered that while the Crypto.org Chain is the backbone behind all Crypto.com applications, the Cronos Chain is EVM compatible blockchain that is fully interoperable with Ethereum. This full compatibility is possible because of Ethermint, which is a scalable and high-throughput blockchain framework that is also able to have a fast transaction finality.

Cronos is a layer 1 blockchain able to perform high transaction throughput (from hundreds to thousands of transactions per second), fast transaction finality (in 5 to 6 seconds), and low transaction fees thanks to its Proof of Authority (PoA) consensus mechanism. In Cronos, the PoA is a modified form of Tendermint’s Proof of Stake (PoS) where, instead of staking with monetary value, a validator’s identity performs the role of stake. In a nutshell, the validators are well known, carefully-vetted, and already experienced. However, Cronos Chain allows all CRO staking token holders to participate in its governance. Anyone can make a proposal, fund it, and vote for it, and others will ensure that it is adopted. Currently, there are 26 live Cronos validators.

Proposals, such as a request to change some parameters of the network, are made by the Cronos community and are subject to voting. There is a minimum number of CROs that must be filed in order to submit a proposal, and the duration of the voting period lasts 14 days. Everyone’s voting power depends on bonded stake.

The validators have the task of keeping the network safe and operating in the good of the Cronos ecosystem. If they fail to achieve this, they are subjected to certain forms of punishment, which depend on their degree of misconduct. Tendermint has a mechanism to publish evidence of inefficient validators. If they do not sign blocks for a certain period of time, they are ‘jailed’, meaning that they are excluded from the active validator list. During this time, they cannot obtain any rewards, although they are still given a chance to recover their infrastructure and to get back on track.

On the other hand, if the validators sign conflicting messages/blocks at the same height, they are not only jailed, but also ‘slashed’, meaning that they lose their stake and are blacklisted forever.

It is important to underline that in the Cronos consensus mechanism the staking token is used only for governance purposes. In fact, this token is not listed on exchanges and has no market value. Instead, the Cronos (CRO) token is used to pay network transaction fees which are collected by validator nodes.

Cronos Governance

As an open blockchain, Cronos allows every token holder to participate in its governance. Anyone can make a proposal, fund it, and vote for it alongside other investors who ensure to make certain of its adoption. The process for approving proposals are:

• The conception of the idea
• Drafting of the proposal
• Collection of opinions from the community
• Proposal review
• The proposal is sent to the main network
• Deposit a minimum of 10,000 CRO tokens to prompt the balloting process
• Voting on the active proposals within the network
• Acceptance or rejection of the proposal depends on the results of the vote.

What Is the CRO token?

Cronos (CRO) is the native cryptocurrency token of Cronos Chain. Its maximum supply is 30 billion units, following a decision by Crypto.com to burn 70 Billion in February of 2021. Of these 30 billion units, 25.26 billion are already in circulation (September 2022). The token’s original deployment was as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain, then migrated in the Cosmos ecosystem. CRO has many use cases and serves for different activities within the whole ecosystem. Below are the main activities.

• Staking: Node operators, delegators, and governance proposers need to have CRO tokens to enable their activities;
• Payments & Financial Services: The token CRO can be used to pay transaction fees on both blockchains, as well as as a form of payment across the multiple Crypto.com products, such as the Visa Cards and the Crypto Pay app. CRO can also be staked on the app to allow users to obtain various benefits and promotions;
• Trading: Users can speculate on the value of CRO on various crypto exchanges. In fact, it is paired with several other cryptocurrencies;
• DeFi: The CRO token allows users to interact with the numerous DeFi platforms, from DEXs to yield aggregators, which have been built on the Cronos Chain.

Cronos Ecosystem

Source: Medium - Cronos

Cronos is an open ecosystem supported by a wide range of more than 100 contributors, validators, and Dapp developers. It already has numerous different DeFi platforms, of which many come directly from the Ethereum world. Below are listed some of them.

• VVS Finance: The main DeFi protocol available on Cronos Chain and the largest by total value locked (TVL). VVS is a classic AMM (Automated Market Maker) and works on the basis of liquidity pools, so there is no order book. It offers the most popular DeFi functions, such as token swaps, farming and staking.
• Tectonic: A cross-chain and non-custodial money market that is a lending platform from which one can borrow a coin or provide it to other users in order to obtain a passive income. This project took second place in terms of liquidity within days of its debut and was very successful. Tectonic offers users two solutions:

1. Provide liquidity and obtain passive income in exchange.

1. Use what is deposited as collateral to borrow an asset to invest elsewhere.

At the time of writing, Tectonic offers the ability to trade with these stablecoins and crypto: DAI, USDT, USDC, TUSD, WBTC, WETH, CRO, and TONIC (the platform’s native token).

• CronaSwap: Cronaswap offers the typical functionality of the Defi, with very high returns in terms of APR. Users can do token swaps, farming and staking, and provide liquidity to the pools. In addition, they can receive additional rewards in the form of CRONA, the native token of the platform.
• Beefy Finance: A decentralized multi chain yield optimiser that bridges multiple blockchains. Because of the complex compound strategies of its Vaults, users can deposit their crypto inside and generate passive income, which is added to the initial deposit, in order to increase profit exponentially. Beefy distributes most of the rewards generated by the platform to $BIFI stakers.
• MM Finance: One of the most popular DEXs and Automated Market Makers (AMM) on Cronos, also because of its low trading fees. This platform is the first to introduce Protocol Owned Liquidity (POL) with the Cronos ecosystem. This POL is a mechanism that allows a protocol to be self-financed, because it can count on its own liquidity and obtain better stability. When users make a trade on the platform, they pay a 0.17% trading fee, and a portion of the fee is used to buy back $MMF (The platform’s native token) and form the Protocol Owned Liquidity.

Is CRO a Good Investment?

The year 2021 has been very exciting for CRO, especially for the company behind the project, Crypto.com. In fact, it has had an important expansion on several fronts, from marketing to the quantity of services offered to the public. The exchange has added several trading pairs, many of them with CRO, and on the technical side, the launch of the two chains has greatly contributed to the expansion of its ecosystem. Coupled together, the two blockchains complement one another and also enable Crypto.com to offer more advanced products, such as Defi and NFT marketplaces, offering many more use cases for the CRO token.

The entire Cronos ecosystem was born only recently, and perhaps the success gathered so far is just a small part of what will come in the future. Its potential is enormous, considering the large number of users it has managed to attract and all the DeFi projects that are emerging. In addition, the Cronos Chain has proven to be a very fast and low-cost blockchain, which can only be good for the adoption of its token.

How to Own CRO?

You can own CRO via a crypto centralized exchange, so you can begin by creating a Gate.io account. Once the account is verified and funded, find out the steps to buy CRO. In a nutshell, you can do this via flash swap, trading the spot market or even using leverage.

News on Cronos

On September 2nd 2022, Crypto.com announced support for the native asset of a new non-fungible token (NFT) platform. This platform is called Minted.network, and is a decentralized NFT platform native to Ethereum and Cronos that allows users to list and purchase more than 10 million NFTs. The exchange’s customers can now trade the token MTD, which will be used to reward users by sharing the revenue from platform fees and other utilities. MTD may also be used for governance of the platform in the future.

Useful References

For the latest updates about Cronos, you can visit:

• The official website
• Twitter
• Discord
• GitHub
• Telegram
• Reddit

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