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 (dApps), 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
✅ 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 ATHHuge thank you to the entire #CRO community
— Kris | Crypto.com (@Kris_HK) November 8, 2021
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, for instance 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 their testnet service in July this year, and have reportedly since facilitated 1.5 million transactions from over 600,000 wallet addresses. At the time, Crypto.com’s 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 one hundred 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 launch, the Cronos ecosystem has attracted over twenty 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 DeFi, NFT 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.
