What is Cronos (CRO?

In the cryptocurrency world, almost every major exchange now has its own token. Among the most notable examples of this trend is Binance's BNB, OKX's OKB, and Huobi's HT. So, what's the answer to the frequently asked question, "What is Cronos?" For those wondering what Cronos is, in short: it's the base currency of Crypto.com's own payment and exchange platform and the EVM-compatible blockchain network known as Cronos Chain. When we delve deeper into Cronos, we find that it's not just an exchange token but also a comprehensive infrastructure designed for decentralized finance (DeFi ecosystem), NFT, and Web3 applications.

Cronos (CRO) is the native cryptocurrency of the Crypto.com ecosystem. In other words, it's the primary token used on Crypto.com's payment, trading, and financial services platform. Initially known as Crypto.com Coin, the CRO token eventually became known as "Cronos." The Cronos network, a blockchain compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) developed by Crypto.com, was launched in 2021. This allows Cronos to support Ethereum-based smart contracts and allows developers to easily port their decentralized applications (DApps) to the network. Cronos's goal is to provide a scalable and user-friendly infrastructure for decentralized applications, decentralized finance (DeFi), NFT platforms, and cryptocurrency payment solutions. So, what is the history of Cronos, who developed it, and why is it considered so valuable? In this guide, we will examine the history, technical specifications, and use cases of the Cronos coin.

Cronos Definition and Origins

Cronos is a cryptocurrency project developed by Crypto.com and is known by the symbol CRO. "What is Cronos coin?" The short answer to this question is as follows: Cronos coin (CRO) is both the native token of Crypto.com's own blockchain network and the utility token used in all Crypto.com products. First released in late 2018, the CRO token was initially issued on the Ethereum network using the ERC-20 standard to provide benefits to Crypto.com users. Crypto.com was founded in 2016 under the name Monaco and aimed to offer cryptocurrency-powered Visa cards. In 2018, Monaco rebranded itself as Crypto.com and introduced the CRO token as the ecosystem's native currency. Subsequently, Crypto.com began developing its own blockchain. In 2021, a new Ethereum-compatible blockchain network called Cronos Chain was launched. Cronos Chain was designed to operate in parallel with Crypto.com's existing Crypto.org Chain network and is specifically focused on supporting DeFi, gaming (GameFi), and NFT applications.

Cronos History: Major Milestones

The development of Cronos and the history of the CRO coin are closely linked to the evolution of Crypto.com. Here are some key milestones in the history of Cronos:

• 2016: Crypto.com, originally known as Monaco, was founded in Hong Kong by Kris Marszalek and his team. The company's initial goal was to offer Visa cards that could be loaded with cryptocurrency. Founders included Kris Marszalek, Rafael Melo, Gary Or, and Bobby Bao.
• 2017: The Monaco project held an ICO to launch its own cryptocurrency. At this ICO, a token called MCO was sold, raising approximately $26.7 million. (Note: MCO is a separate legacy token from Cronos.)
• 2018: Monaco rebranded as Crypto.com and acquired the valuable Crypto.com domain name in June 2018. That same year, the CRO token was launched in November-December 2018. CRO began trading at a low price of approximately $0.02. At the end of 2018, Crypto.com announced that its own blockchain, Crypto.org Chain, was under development and that CRO would become the network's native currency.
• 2019-2020: The Crypto.com app experienced rapid growth with products such as a cryptocurrency card, Crypto Earn (crypto interest), and Crypto Credit. The number of users surpassed 1 million in September 2019, and innovations such as a DeFi wallet and crypto tax services were added in 2020. During this period, the CRO token gained value through various use cases within the Crypto.com ecosystem.
• March 2021: Crypto.com migrated its blockchain, Crypto.org Chain, to its mainnet, and CRO became the network's native coin. This step marked a significant milestone in Crypto.com's transition to a decentralized infrastructure. Ahead of the mainnet launch in March 2021, Crypto.com announced that it had burned 70% of its 100 billion CRO supply (70 billion tokens), reducing the total supply to 30 billion. This massive burn was intended to make CRO entirely community-driven and more scarce.
• November 2021: The Cronos Chain mainnet (mainnet beta) officially launched on November 8, 2021. Cronos Chain was born as an EVM-compatible blockchain with the goal of supporting applications on the Ethereum network and growing the DeFi ecosystem. That same month, the Crypto.com exchange began supporting low-fee deposits and withdrawals of CRO and other major cryptocurrencies via the Cronos network. A few weeks after the Cronos mainnet launch, the CRO price reached an all-time high of around $0.90 (November 2021).

• Aggressive marketing strategy in 2021: During this period, Crypto.com made significant leaps not only in technical terms but also in brand awareness. With a vision to make crypto a part of daily life, the company became the official title sponsor of Formula 1's Miami Grand Prix, a global partner of the Italian Serie A and the UFC, and signed agreements with established sports clubs such as Paris Saint-Germain, the Philadelphia 76ers, the Montreal Canadiens, and the Australian Football League. It also established a long-term educational partnership with the LeBron James Family Foundation, acquired the naming rights to the Los Angeles Staples Center and rebranded it as Crypto.com Arena, and sponsored the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
• February 2022: Crypto.com announced the rebranding of its CRO token from "Crypto.org Coin" to "Cronos." This rebranding was intended to highlight the growing ecosystem of the Cronos chain and reflect the project's decentralized identity. 2022 also saw increased integration of Cronos across various global platforms. Crypto.com fully integrated Cronos with its own application and exchange, allowing users to use CRO on both the Crypto.org Chain and Cronos Chain networks. During this period, Cronos was also listed on various exchanges and integrated into payment solutions such as Crypto.com Pay.
• 2023 - 2024: Significant growth was seen in the DeFi and GameFi fields on the Cronos chain. The Cronos network hosted many new decentralized exchanges, lending protocols, and gaming projects. For example, popular DeFi applications such as VVS Finance, Tectonic, Ferro, and MM Finance achieved high user numbers and total locked asset value (TVL) on Cronos. In late 2023, Cronos also made strides in the GameFi space with the launch of an NFT-based game, Loaded Lions. In October 2023, the Crypto.org Chain was renamed "Cronos PoS Chain" and merged under the Cronos brand. The Cronos team aimed to further increase the network's capacity and speed by working on scaling technologies like zkEVM towards 2024.
• 2025: Cronos released its 2025-2026 roadmap. This roadmap focuses on three main objectives: accelerating the tokenization of assets (stocks, real estate, commodities, etc.), expanding retail access by offering DeFi and payment solutions to 150 million users, and increasing liquidity with CRO-backed products on the institutional side. The roadmap also highlights technical developments such as AI-based tools, new use cases for CRO, faster block times, and lower transaction fees. The goal is to reach $20 billion in CRO usage and $10 billion in tokenized asset volume by 2026. Additionally, there is a shift towards AI agents.

Why is Cronos Valuable?

So, what is the purpose of the CRO coin, and what are its valuable features? To understand the value of Cronos, it's necessary to consider both its role within the Crypto.com ecosystem and its technical advantages.

The core token of the Crypto.com ecosystem

CRO is the primary token used in many services offered by Crypto.com. It's possible to make payments with CRO on the Crypto.com app, pay transaction fees with CRO on the exchange platform, and earn cashback rewards when using the Crypto.com Visa card. For example, with Visa cards offered by Crypto.com, users can upgrade their card levels by staking a certain amount of CRO and receive cashback of 1% to 8% in CRO on their spending. This gives CRO a wide range of uses and demand.

EVM-compatible and scalable blockchain: Because the Cronos Chain is compatible with Ethereum, popular DApps on Ethereum can easily be ported to the Cronos network. This EVM-compatible blockchain structure is a significant advantage for developers and projects. Moreover, the Cronos network offers much faster and lower-cost transactions compared to Ethereum. By design, the blockchain is capable of processing thousands of transactions per second, with transaction fees of only a few cents. This high scalability translates to a fast and affordable experience for users.

Providing infrastructure for the DeFi and NFT ecosystem:

Cronos offers dedicated support for DeFi applications and NFT platforms. Automatic market-making decentralized exchanges (AMMs), lending/borrowing protocols, and yield farming capabilities have rapidly developed on the network. For example, VVS Finance stands out as one of the easiest-to-use DeFi platforms on Cronos, offering token trading and staking with low fees. Similarly, the Tectonic protocol allows users to borrow and lend against CRO and other assets. This diversity on the Cronos network and the growing DeFi ecosystem are significant factors driving the demand for CRO tokens. In the NFT space, Cronos is compatible with Crypto.com's NFT platform, and NFTs have even begun to be created for games running on Cronos. This versatility makes Cronos the fuel of a broad ecosystem.

Fast and low-cost transactions

Because the Cronos network has a Tendermint-based architecture, transactions are confirmed within seconds. Block times on the Cronos blockchain are quite short (approximately half a second to 5 seconds, depending on updates), resulting in high transaction capacity. While Ethereum suffers from high fees and slowness during peak demand, Cronos offers users faster and cheaper transactions. Low fees are particularly advantageous for small-scale DeFi transactions or NFT trading.

Major exchange and wallet integrations

Cronos (CRO) is listed on many major global cryptocurrency exchanges. CRO can be traded on exchanges such as Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken. Popular wallets like MetaMask also support the Cronos network, allowing users to easily access DApps on the Cronos network. Because Crypto.com's own app also fully supports Cronos, millions of Crypto.com users can transfer CRO or conduct transactions on the Cronos network with a single click. Additionally, having a globally recognized company like Crypto.com, experienced in financial services, behind Cronos increases confidence in the project. Thanks to Crypto.com's global marketing efforts (e.g., sponsorships of sporting events and advertising campaigns), the CRO token has become widely known.

Who is the Founder of Cronos?

The Cronos project is backed by the Crypto.com company and team. Crypto.com's co-founders are Kris Marszalek, Rafael Melo, Gary Or, and Bobby Bao. Although founded in Hong Kong in 2016, the company has expanded its headquarters to other regions, primarily Singapore. Kris Marszalek is a Polish entrepreneur and the CEO of Crypto.com. Rafael Melo is a CFO with experience in finance, and Gary Or is a CTO with an engineering background. Bobby Bao, who also comes from an investment banking background, led the strategy and business development side. Cronos was developed directly by this team and launched within Crypto.com. The Crypto.com team brought together talent from around the world to develop Cronos. While the company's official headquarters are in Singapore, its team members are global, spanning from the US to Europe and Asia. Furthermore, during the development of Cronos, startup accelerator programs such as Particle B (Cronos Labs) were implemented. This program, led by Crypto.com co-founder Gary Or, introduced new projects to the Cronos ecosystem.

Technical Overview

Cronos's technical infrastructure and token economy (tokenomics) contain important details that make it unique. The key technical features of Cronos Chain and the CRO token can be summarized as follows:

Blockchain and Consensus Mechanism

Cronos Chain is a blockchain built on the Cosmos SDK and uses the Tendermint BFT engine as its consensus algorithm. The Cronos network initially operated with a Proof of Authority (PoA) model, a method based on the production of blocks by certain trusted validators. These validators consist of a limited number of nodes selected from the Crypto.com ecosystem and provide initial security for the network. In later stages, Cronos also supports a structure similar to the Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) model to further decentralize the network. This means community members can vote for existing validators by staking their CROs, thus achieving a balance between scalability and decentralization through a hybrid combination of PoA and DPoS. Thanks to this Tendermint-based consensus, transactions on Cronos reach finality quickly and operate at high efficiency.

EVM Compatibility and Smart Contracts

Cronos is an EVM-compatible blockchain. This means that smart contracts and DApps on Ethereum can run on Cronos with minimal modifications. While Cronos is developed with the Cosmos SDK, it uses Ethermint to support EVM. Ethermint is a technology that brings together the worlds of Cosmos and Ethereum, so the Cronos network is both compatible with the Ethereum ecosystem and acts as a bridge to the Cosmos ecosystem via the IBC (Inter-Blockchain Communication) protocol. In short, Cronos is a platform that technically bridges the gap between Ethereum and Cosmos, offering developers a double advantage. Smart contracts can be written in Ethereum languages ​​like Solidity and ported to Cronos, streamlining the developer experience.

Token and Supply (CRO)

Cronos's native token is CRO. The total supply is 30 billion. Initially, a total of 100 billion CRO was created, but a massive burn in March 2021 permanently removed 70 billion CRO from circulation. Following this burn, the maximum supply was set at 30 billion. The majority of the remaining 30 billion tokens remain in circulation (approximately 25 billion are in circulation as of 2023, with the remainder held for the ecosystem development fund and Crypto.com reserves). CRO miner

CRO is not a mineable coin; all tokens are generated at the moment of genesis. Because no new tokens are minted, CRO has a deflationary structure. Since supply is limited, increasing demand is expected to have a positive impact on the price.

Transaction Speed ​​and Scalability

Cronos is a very fast network in terms of technical capacity. Block times are around 5 seconds or less, meaning that transactions are confirmed within seconds. In fact, with the Galileo update in early 2023, Cronos block times were reduced to 0.5 seconds, significantly increasing the network's transaction speed. The Cronos team states that the network can theoretically process over 50,000 transactions per second (TPS) in a laboratory environment. Of course, in real-world conditions, the number of transactions varies depending on network load, but in practice, Cronos has been tested to easily handle several thousand transactions per second. This scalable structure ensures low transaction fees and a smooth user experience, even during periods of heavy usage. Transaction fees on Cronos are typically very low, around 0.001 CRO (not even a few cents). This makes Cronos particularly suitable for scenarios requiring frequent transactions, such as small-stakes financial transactions or blockchain games.

Utilities

The CRO token serves multiple functions within the Cronos ecosystem. First, all transaction fees (gas fees) on the Cronos Chain are paid in CRO. This means that anyone wishing to use the Cronos network must hold a certain amount of CRO. Second, the staking mechanism (CRO staking) is available on both the Crypto.org Chain and the Cronos Chain. On the Crypto.org Chain, users can delegate their CRO to join validators and earn annual returns. On the Cronos Chain, because the number of validators is limited, instead of traditional staking, institutions wishing to become validators must deposit a certain amount of collateral called Cronos Staking Tokens.

However, regular users can also indirectly lock their CRO in the Cronos ecosystem and earn returns from various DeFi protocols. For example, it's possible to earn additional token rewards by providing liquidity to CRO farms on the VVS Finance and MM Finance platforms. Another important use case for CRO is in products like Crypto.com Visa cards and Crypto Pay. By staking CRO on the Crypto.com app, you can apply for a Visa card and receive card privileges (Netflix/Spotify cashback, lounge access, etc.) based on the CRO stake amount. When making purchases with Crypto.com Pay, those who pay with CRO receive 5-10% cashback in CRO.

Interoperability

Because Cronos is part of the Cosmos ecosystem, it supports communication between other blockchains via the IBC protocol. For example, it's possible to bridge Cronos with networks like Cosmos Hub (ATOM) and Osmosis to transfer assets. Bridges have also been established between Ethereum and Cronos. Users can migrate their Ethereum assets to the Cronos network in CRO-ERC20 and CRC20 formats. Cronos' versatile compatibility facilitates the flow of liquidity across different ecosystems, allowing users to transfer value without being limited to a single network.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Below are some frequently asked questions and answers about Cronos:

• When did Cronos (CRO) appear?: The Cronos coin (CRO token) first appeared in November-December 2018. With Crypto.com's rebranding at the time, CRO was introduced to users and began trading in the market. Meanwhile, the EVM-compatible blockchain network called Cronos launched its mainnet in November 2021; in other words, the Cronos network went live at the end of 2021, expanding the usability of the CRO token.
• Who founded the Cronos coin?: Cronos is a project developed by Crypto.com. Crypto.com's founders include Kris Marszalek, Rafael Melo, Gary Or, and Bobby Bao. This team began operating in the cryptocurrency world by founding Crypto.com (then known as Monaco) in 2016. Cronos coin was also developed by the company's founding team and engineers.
• How does Cronos work?: Cronos is a blockchain that operates using a Proof of Authority (PoA) consensus mechanism. Specific validators on the network validate transactions and produce blocks. Because the Cronos network is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, smart contracts on Ethereum can also run on Cronos. This allows Cronos to offer an Ethereum-like experience with a faster and more affordable infrastructure. Users can connect their wallets to the Cronos network to use decentralized applications, make transfers, and interact with smart contracts. Transaction security is ensured by the network's distributed validators and the Tendermint BFT algorithm. In short, Cronos combines Cosmos technology with Ethereum compatibility to create a blockchain network that is easy to use for both developers and users.
• How much was Cronos coin when it first launched?: When the CRO coin was first released, its price was quite low. When it was listed on exchanges in December 2018, it was trading at approximately $0.02. In fact, in early 2019, the price of CRO fell to $0.012, reaching its lowest levels. It then gradually rose with the growth of the Crypto.com ecosystem. During the 2021 bull market, driven by the launch of the Cronos chain, the price of CRO rose from $0.10 to over $0.90 by the end of the year. Initially worth a few cents, the Cronos coin experienced a significant increase in value over time (though it subsequently fluctuated with market conditions).
• What is Cronos used for, and why is it valuable?: Cronos (CRO) serves both as a utility token within the Crypto.com ecosystem and is the base currency of the Cronos blockchain. Payments can be made with CRO on the Crypto.com app, CRO can be staked to earn Visa card privileges and interest income, and CRO spenders can earn discounts and cashback through Crypto.com Pay. On the Cronos blockchain, CRO is used to pay for smart contract transactions and can be staked to secure the network. These versatile uses make Cronos valuable. Furthermore, CRO's limited supply (fixed at 30 billion) and the fact that a large portion of it is in circulation reduces inflationary pressure in the long term. As the Cronos chain grows, each new DeFi project, game, or NFT platform joins the network, increasing demand for CRO. All of this contributes to Cronos's perceived value.
• Is Cronos limited, and what is its maximum supply?: Yes, the Cronos (CRO) token's maximum supply is limited and set at 30 billion units. Initially, a total of 100 billion CRO was available, but a decision was made in March 2021 to permanently reduce the supply by burning 70 billion tokens. This burn is considered one of the largest token burns in crypto history. Ultimately, the maximum supply was 30 billion CRO, and the system was set to prevent new tokens from being added beyond this amount. Currently (as of 2025), there are approximately 26-27 billion CRO in circulation, with the remainder allocated for ecosystem development and staking rewards. CRO tokens cannot be mined; all coins are pre-created. In short, Cronos' maximum supply will not exceed 30 billion.

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