Cronos Labs has announced that Cronos zkEVM, the first layer-2 ZK chain besides ZKsync Era, is now live on mainnet. The new network has launched as a collaboration between Cronos Labs and engineering teams from Matter Labs (one of the contributors to ZKsync), Crypto.com, VVS Finance, Fulcrom Finance and Veno Finance, as well as more than 20 launch partners.
First third-party ZK chain
Cronos zkEVM is a layer-2 blockchain on top of Ethereum, powered by ZKsync technology. Its testnet, launched in December 2023, has seen more than 3 million unique addresses creating millions of transactions. The network is now onmainnet.
Cronos zkEVM will coexist with Cronos EVM and Cronos POS, blockchains which encompass more than 6 billion dollars of user assets and have securely settled more than 150 million transactions by more than 1 million users to date. The new network expands the Cronos ecosystem into the fast-growing world of interconnected Ethereum layer-2 networks.
Cronos zkEVM uses $zkCRO, a liquid staked version of $CRO (Cronos), as its gas token, although account abstraction makes it possible for users to pay transaction fees in a wide range of tokens or even enable gasless transactions.
Ken Timsit from Cronos Labs, commented: “The Cronos team has a track record of leveraging the best blockchain technology to create compelling use cases, as well as contributing back to these open-source projects. Through the launch of Cronos zkEVM and our integration with ZKsync, we would like to help to realize the long term vision of Ethereum on a path towards infinite scalability and mainstream adoption.”
Anthony Rose, Chief Technology Officer at Matter Labs, commented: “The ZKsync v24 protocol upgrade, deployed to mainnet back in June, was a major step forward for the ZKsync network. This upgrade paved the way for ZK Chains to join the Elastic Chain ecosystem. The Cronos team is extremely strong, and they have a proven track record in delivering technologies that people want to use. It has been a really rewarding collaboration, and I’m really excited that they’re hitting such a consequential milestone and have also done so as the first ZK Chain after Era to be live. I’m looking forward to the continued innovation as the broader network continues to mature.”
Cronos zkEVM leverages its vibrant user and developer ecosystem of the Cronos project, known as #CROFam, representing an addressable user base of over a 100 million people. Most of the top Cronos app developers have already announced their expansion to the new chain, together with several new launch partners.
Cronos’ DeFi ecosystem offers an appealing triple yield value proposition to end-users. This means that end-users can put their crypto assets to work and simultaneously unlock three levels of yield: the staking APR of liquid staked cryptocurrencies such as zkCRO, vETH and vUSD; the DeFi yield generated by decentralized applications, and the loyalty points accumulated by users when they complete ecosystem quests, that can be claimed to unlock additional rewards as part of the Pioneer Program.
Thousands of early adopters have already acquired $zkCRO by participating in the pre-launch deposit program called Cronos zkEVM Passage, which attracted 100 million CRO in deposits.
Cronos zkEVM features a native Ethereum bridge, secured by Ethereum smart contracts, that is shared with Era and other ZK chains. The enhanced security of this L1 <> L2 bridge changes the game completely, bringing peace of mind to end-users who until now only rely on third-party controlled bridges to transfer cryptocurrencies between layer-1 or layer-2 networks.
Launch partners
Cronos zkEVM’s mainnet is launched with dozens of launch partners who have already announced plans to deploy their products on the network in the coming weeks.
Supported self-custodial wallets include Crypto.om DeFi Wallet, Rabby, and MetaMask
Launch partners include the core contributors of the network such as Cronos Labs and engineering teams from Matter Labs, Crypto.com, VVS Finance, Fulcrom Finance and Veno Finance.
A number of decentralized applications in the DeFi, NFT and gaming space such as H2 Finance, Fulcrom Finance, Ebisu’s Bay, Puush.fun, Wolfswap, Zerolend, Crolon Mars, Minted, Amply Finance, Securd, Reax, Cronos Safe, and Cronos Connect are also launching.
Application developers will be able to leverage developer tooling platforms such as Cronos Explorer, Cronos Developer Portal, Pyth, Band Protocol, Goldsky, Innerworks, Zyfi and NFTs2Me.
When it comes to user onramp and offramp, Cronos zkEVM features a native L1 <> L2 bridge with Ethereum, supported by Crypto.com, one of the world’s leading custodial exchanges. It will soon be supported by additional third party bridges such as XY Finance, deBridge, RhinoFi and others.
Pioneer program
The Cronos zkEVM Pioneer Program (https://zkevm.cronos.org/missions) is a loyalty program that makes it possible for end-users to accumulate loyalty points when they perform eligible actions on the network, and subsequently to redeem these points to unlock rewards from participating apps.
Specific quests have been announced on the Cronos zkEVM Pioneer Program website, such as bridging funds, sending transactions and using eligible dApps. At the end of the season, users will see the potential value of their points in various participating cryptocurrencies, and will be able to claim these cryptocurrencies gradually.
The Pioneer program reward pool will be significant. It includes more than 5,000,000 ZK tokens already collected by Cronos zkEVM from the ZK Nation airdrop. Additional token contributions in zkCRO and tokens of participating projects will be announced in due course.
What’s next
Cronos zkEVM’s alpha mainnet phase is expected to last until the end of September 2024. During the alpha phase, the network’s engineering team will monitor its performance and collect feedback from users and developers, before deciding to move into the beta phase.
The launch of Cronos zkEVM mainnet represents a significant milestone on Cronos’ journey towards scalability and mainstream adoption. It also benefits the broader ZK chain and Ethereum ecosystems by enabling Ethereum’s vision of infinite horizontal scalability through layered networks.
About Cronos
Cronos (cronos.org) is a leading blockchain ecosystem that has partnered with Crypto.com and more than 500 application developers and contributors representing an addressable user base of more than a hundred million people around the world. Cronos’ mission is to make it easy and safe for the next billion crypto users to adopt self-custody in Web3, with a focus on Decentralized Finance and Gaming.
The Cronos universe encompasses 3 chains: Cronos EVM, the leading Ethereum-compatible blockchain built on the Cosmos SDK; Cronos POS, a leading Cosmos chain for payments and NFTs; and Cronos zkEVM, a new high-performance layer 2 network secured by Ethereum.
Cronos ranks among the top 15 blockchain ecosystems, encompassing more than 6 billion dollars of user assets. Since inception, it has securely settled more than 150 million transactions.
Cronos is supported by Cronos Labs, a 100 M$ Web3 start-up accelerator focused on DeFi, GameFi, and the development of the Cronos ecosystem.
About ZKsync
ZKsync is a suite of zero-knowledge (ZK) technology solutions that can be leveraged to create secure, censorship-resistant, privacy-preserving, and hyper-scalable blockchains. ZKsync is made available to developers, enterprises, and financial institutions through the ZK Stack Ethereum rollup framework, which enables the deployment of customizable ZK Chains. These ZK Chains form an interconnected network through the ZKsync 3.0 upgrade, called the Elastic Chain. The Elastic Chain enables native, trustless, and low-cost interoperability between the ZK Chains powered by ZK Stack. Era is the first mainnet chain in the Elastic Chain ecosystem with more launching in the near future.
To learn more about ZKsync, visit zksync.io.
