Hassan Maishera
Cronos Labs announced on Thursday, August 15th, that Cronos zkEVM, the first layer-2 ZK chain besides ZKsync Era, is now live on mainnet.
In a press release shared with Cryptowisser, the team said the new network was launched as a partnership 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.
Cronos zkEVM to Become the First Third-party ZK Chain
Cronos Labs explained that Cronos zkEVM is a layer-2 blockchain on top of Ethereum, powered by ZKsync technology. 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.
Furthermore, the new network connects the Cronos ecosystem to the fast-growing world of interconnected Ethereum layer-2 networks.
According to the team, Cronos zkEVM uses $zkCRO, a liquid-staked version of $CRO (Cronos), as its gas token. However, thanks to its account abstraction feature, users can pay transaction fees in a wide range of tokens or even enable gasless transactions.
While commenting on the mainnet launch, Ken Timsit from Cronos Labs, said,
"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, added that,
“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.”
According to Cronos Labs, its DeFi ecosystem offers a triple-yield value proposition to end users. This implies that the end users can allow 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.
The team revealed that thousands of early adopters have already acquired $zkCRO by participating in the pre-launch deposit program called Cronos zkEVM Passage. So far, more than 100 million CRO deposits have been recorded via the pre-launch program.
Cronos zkEVM comes with a native Ethereum bridge secured by Ethereum smart contracts, that is shared with Era and other ZK chains.
Crypto.com, Rabby, and MetaMask Among Launch partners
Cronos Labs has revealed that the 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.
According to the team, Crypto.com DeFi Wallet, Rabby, and MetaMask are the self-custodial wallets that support this launch. Furthermore, 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.
Other DeFi, NFT, and gaming projects that are participating in this launch include H2 Finance, Fulcrom Finance, Ebisu's Bay, Puush.fun, Wolfswap, Zerolend, Crolon Mars, Minted, Amply Finance, Securd, Reax, Cronos Safe, and Cronos Connect.
App developers can use developer tooling platforms such as Cronos Explorer, Cronos Developer Portal, Pyth, Band Protocol, Goldsky, Innerworks, Zyfi, and NFTs2Me. Cronos zkEVM features a native L1 <> L2 bridge with Ethereum and will be supported by Crypto.com, one of the world's leading custodial exchanges. Cronos Labs is working to introduce support by additional third-party bridges such as XY Finance, deBridge, RhinoFi, and others.
The Cronos zkEVM Pioneer program to Distribute 5m ZK Tokens
Cronos Labs explained that its Cronos zkEVM Pioneer Program is a loyalty program that allows end-users to accumulate loyalty points when they perform eligible actions on the network and subsequently redeem these points to unlock rewards from participating apps.
Cronos has already announced specific quests on the Cronos zkEVM Pioneer Program website, including bridging funds, sending transactions, and using eligible dApps. Following the completion of the season, users will see the potential value of their points in various participating cryptocurrencies and can claim these cryptocurrencies gradually.
According to the team, the Pioneer program reward pool will include 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.
Cronos zkEVM’s alpha mainnet phase will until the end of September 2024. During this 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.
Cronos 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.
Meanwhile, 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.
