Interview: Cronos Provides First Ethereum-To-Cosmos Bridge And Is Building An Interchain Web3

One of their most high-profile use cases is Crypto.com, one of the world's most popular crypto wallets with over 50 million users. Cronos is working directly with Crypto.com to provide an EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) bridge that connects the Cosmoverse to the father of all DeFi chains, Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH).

Intent on creating a blockchain with superior interoperability, Cronos claims to be among the top 10 blockchains with close to 1 million users.

Cronos recently integrated the Cronos Play plugin for Epic Games' Unreal Marketplace, the secondary market for DLC and objects you can buy to incorporate into your game.

We interviewed Ken Timsit, managing director of Cronos Chain and Cronos Labs Accelerator, about the project's trajectory of the first Ethereum bridge.

BZ: What is the objective of Cronos?

Timsit: "At a high level, the vision of Cronos is to be one of the chains that will bring the next billion users to Web3. We believe DeFi and self-custody should not be separated from fiat currencies and the banking system. 

The next generation of users will not be as attached to specific ecosystems of chains. For many of those users, their first experience of crypto is through a centralized exchange where they don't know where what chains are transacting to because everything is available in the same interface.

BZ: Is EVM-compatibility essential to interoperability that will be meaningful for users?

Timsit: "It is not so much a bet on a specific technology. We're offering users connectivity. Today, you have 300 million 350 million people worldwide holding crypto. And out of them, perhaps, you know, 30 to 50 million are familiar with self-custody and interacting directly with the blockchain. 

Source: Cronos.org

BZ: Are you replicating the functions of EVM on-chain to avoid bottlenecks on Ethereum network?

Timsit: "We're building a side chain, not a Layer 2. So we're not relying on the Ethereum network to process any of the transactions on Cronos. we're providing an environment that supports solidity smart contracts but on a different chain."

BZ: Is Crypto.com your main use case at this point?

Timsit: "Crypto.com is our main source of users since it has 50 million users worldwide. Most of Cronos users are also Crypto.com users. However, Cronos is an ecosystem of third-party applications. Today, there are around 300 applications on Cronos, and all of them are independent. So crypto.com is not running applications on Cronos. They are making it easy for their users to access applications living on Cronos."

BZ: So what are you offering to Crypto.com users?

BZ: What should we expect from the next year of development with Cronos?  

BZ: Do you see play-to-earn as a relevant dynamic in GameFi in 2022?

BZ: Can DeFi maintain its relevance without offering early adopter payouts and mountains of hype?

I think that core value that DeFi is creating is going to remain even after we stop paying for rewards."

The Last Word

These days, slavish devotion to a single chain seems like an outmoded idea that puts the community at risk of holding onto outmoded technology due to its reputation, even when there are clearly throughput and transaction speed problems, certainly with Ethereum.

Cosmos and the Cronos chain have interoperability and decentralization baked into their core functionality. That sounds like good future-proofing for a crypto project and allows developers to reach a truly global audience with Web3 apps. 

Right now, the Cronos project seems to be relying on the Crypto.com use case for user acquisition — this is a strength at present but could be a self-limiting liability in the years to come.

If Cronos wants to grow past its big brother project with Cryto.com, they will have to define their identity and advantages without Crypto.com, and it could be that Cronos has the flexibility to change models that an established exchange like Crypto.com may not have.

The Future Of Crypto: Cosmos will be presenting its vision of an interchain future at the Benzinga for its first Future of Crypto live summit on Dec. 7 in New York City at Pier Sixty.

Some of the best minds and most important projects in Web3 will be in attendance, including Cosmos, Yuga Labs, Immutable, Solana, Laguna Labs and Algorand. Keynotes include Jordan Belfort, Kevin O’Leary and Anthony Scaramucci

Cover photo based on image by ipicgr from Pixabay.

Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.