Cronos zkEVM Makes Its Debut On The Ethereum Mainnet

• Cronos Labs partnered with the engineering team from Matter Labs to debut the Cronos zkEVM on the Ethereum mainnet.

Cronos Labs, a prominent Web3 accelerator firm, has confirmed in an announcement that it is partnering with the engineering team from Matter Labs, a firm specializing in Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solutions, to debut the Cronos zkEVM on the Ethereum mainnet. 

The Cronos zkEVM is the “first layer-2 ZK chain besides ZKsync Era”.

As per the announcement shared with Coinspeaker, the team at Matter Labs, which is also responsible for ZKsync, along with Crypto.com, VVS Finance, Fulcrom Finance, Veno Finance, and 20 other entities in the digital asset space, will be responsible for the debut of Cronos zkEVM on the Ethereum mainnet.

Cronos zkEVM was created in February 2023 and has since then achieved the 3 million unique addresses milestone and also processed millions of transactions. 

Further, the new offering on the Ethereum mainnet will be alongside Cronos EVM and Cronos POS, comprising the Cronos ecosystem, which is valued at over $6 billion in user assets.

“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,” said Kem Timsit from Cronos Labs.

Additionally, Cronos zkEVM will be leveraging CROFam, the user and development base of the Cronos ecosystem, which will give the scaling solution another boost in the longer run. 

There are currently around 100 million people in the ecosystem, confirmed the official press release, while adding that the top developers have already confirmed plans of expansion to the new chain.

The Cronos decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem supports diverse transaction fees and offers “triple yield” benefits, as per the announcement. 

This simply means that the users will have the option to put their crypto assets to use and earn levels of returns. 

The first would be the staking APR of tokens like zkCRO, vETH and vUSD followed by the DeFi yield provided by applications on the blockchain. Finally, users will receive loyalty points for completing various tasks in the Cronos ecosystem.

Cronos zkEVM Pioneer Program

The Cronos zkEVM Pioneer Program will provide end-users with loyalty points for performing various actions and being an active member of the Cronos DeFi community. 

Additionally, the reward pool comprises a whopping 5 million ZK tokens collected by Cronos zkEVM from the ZK Nation airdrop.

“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,” confirmed the release.

Notably, the Cronos zkEVM alpha mainnet phase will last for a few weeks until the end of September 2024 before the firm decides to move into the beta phase, solidifying a major milestone for the blockchain ecosystem.