In our last article, we looked at the history of Crypto.com. Now we would like to talk about the network itself in more detail. Its goals, launch stages, architecture, innovations, and ecosystem.

A brief history of Cronos Chain

As we wrote earlier, testnet was launched on July 20, 2021.Testnet didn't last long, and 3 months later it was already released mainnet.

On November 8, the team published a post about the launch of the beta version of the Mainnet (called Scope) and shared the details of the event. This included publishing a roadmap for Bridges with Cosmos and Ethereum.

Later in April 2022, the team announced that a startup accelerator and ecosystem development fund called “Particle B” had been renamed “Cronos Labs”.

What is the Cronos Chain?

Cronos is a sidechain that exists in parallel between Ethereum and Cosmos. It is an EVM chain built on the Cosmos SDK, allowing it to take advantage of both ecosystems.

Cronos allows rapid migration of applications and smart contracts from Ethereum and EVM compatible chains.

The Inter Blockchain Communications (IBC) protocol enables interaction and communication with the Crypto.org Chain - a fully decentralized, open source, high speed, low transaction fees, something that Ethereum lacks. The protocol also allows interaction with other IBC-enabled chains (e.g., Cosmos Hub)

What are Cronos Chain's goals?

The main goal of Cronos chain is massively scale the DeFi ecosystem and decentralized applications. Cronos gives developers the ability to instantly migrate applications from Ethereum and EVM compliant chains. Featuring low cost per transaction, high throughput, and instant block finalization.

Cronos can also provide decentralized applications to more than 10 million users of the Crypto.com ecosystem and beyond.

Kris Marszalek, Co-founder and CEO of Crypto.com said: “We are going to provide full support for developers building on Cronos: technical, funding, marketing — everything you need to turn your idea into reality. Combined with easy dapp portability, I’m confident we will see an explosion of activity on Cronos.”

Cronos Chain architecture

Let's start by highlighting the solutions that Cronos Chain uses.

1. Ethereum Virtual Machine - EVM allows you to build smart contracts as easily as if you were making them for Ethereum, as well as use all the tools and applications of the Ethereum ecosystem
2. Cosmos SDK - Due to the modular structure of the blockchain, you can create a chain based on your needs. There are off-the-shelf options like voting, sending tokens, and IBC. But you can also develop your own modules that your project needs
3. Tendermint’s Core BFT (Byzantine Fault Tolerant) Proof-of-Stake consensus engine - Language Agnostic - ABCI protocol allows to work with the mechanism in program languages: Java, C++, Python, Go, JavaScript, Rust, etc. The main difference between Tendermint and others is the speed of finalization. A transaction is included in a block in seconds and doesn't require waiting for confirmation.
4. Proof of Authority is a reputation-based consensus algorithm that provides a practical and effective solution for blockchains. In PoA-based chains, transactions and blocks are verified by approved credentials known as "validators”

What is the consensus engine? Cronos Testnet is based on Ethermint – it’s a blockchain using Proof-of-Stake, built on the Cosmos SDK, and compatible with EVM. Ethereum requires a scalability solution, the price of gas.

Cronos uses the Cosmos SDK and the Tendermint consensus engine. Tendermint works well in PoS/DPos networks, provides high transaction throughput and ensures instant transaction finality on block commitment, thanks to BFT (Byzantine Fault Tolerant). It was chosen as the consensus engine for the Cronos Chain model for the following important reasons:

1. The work is confirmed by formal research
2. Consensus work is confirmed by tests conducted
3. Amount of projects that already use it. Tendermint has been in continuous development since 2014 and has been adopted by several well-known projects, which shows its success.
4. Modular architecture: as we said before, modular architecture is very useful when you can create additional modules that will be needed exactly for your needs.

Cronos Labs

Speaking of Cronos Chain, we can't help but mention the Cronos Labs Foundation. The renaming of the foundation "Particle B" hasn’t changed the composition of the team. However, along with this event the future programs of the foundation were published:

1. Continued ecosystem grants and integration of strategic protocols that benefit the Cronos ecosystem.
2. Structured Web3 Startup Program
3. A hackathon focused on GameFi (blockchain games).

Cronos Chain Ecosystem

As the main goal of Cronos Chain is to develop an ecosystem, let's take a look at whether the project has succeeded.

According to Defillama service as of June, Cronos Chain is on the 7th place in TVL ranking with more than $1 billion, overtaking such a network as Fantom. At peak times, the TVL figure reached $4 billion, despite the fact that Cronos Chain has a relatively short period of existence. And the number of protocols launched has already reached 63, overtaking already adult TRX and WAVES.

Three DeFi projects make up most of the TVL, they are VVS Finance, Tectonic, MM Finance. MM Finance is AMM (Automated Market Maker Mechanism), an exchange that still makes up quite a substantial part of the total TVL, despite the downtrend.

According to the data we have, it is safe to say that the bet on ecosystem development was made correctly, and the synergy of Crypto.com and Cronos Chain gave the desired result, which the team sought.

Summary

At a time when the market was in an uptrend at the end of 2017, the team was quite successful in thinking through the next steps of their project. Unlike other "card" projects, they correctly saw their development vector, and began to implement successfully it, step-by-step.

The crypto.com domain that we discussed in the previous article (link) may well have been a very expensive purchase, but it is well worth it. Because along with a good-looking name, it gives a big influx of new users who need it so badly, quickly and conveniently to buy cryptocurrency.

And the creation of the Cronos Chain based on Ethermint gave the very advantage that Ethereum needs. We are talking about the cost of transactions and its scalability. By taking advantage of the Cosmos SDK and using EVMs, Cronos Chain has a strong argument in its favor.