While cryptocurrency is still viewed as an open landscape of financial opportunity, it’s a landscape becoming increasingly crowded with competitors vying for market share—but it’s not just new coins. Part of the noise has also been the emergence of various different blockchains.

One blockchain looking to distinguish itself from the pack is Cronos, a decentralized open-source, energy-efficient public blockchain with high speeds and low transaction fees.

Aimed at supporting the creator economy through web3 applications like DeFi and GameFi, Cronos looks to provide the foundational structure for an open metaverse with the goal of serving the next billion web3 users.

---

“Cronos is a layer 1 blockchain that—depending on the day—is ranked number nine or number 10 amongst all blockchains when measured by Total Value Locked (TVL), or the money invested in DeFi,” Ken Timsit, head of Cronos Labs—the entity in charge of developing the Cronos blockchain and its ecosystem—said in a recent interview. “Right now, there’s a proliferation of blockchains—not all of them are as big as we are—and what we’re seeing now is that some chains are defining themselves based on a particular technology they’re bringing to market. The chain is the proof of concept for that technology.”

For Timsit and Cronos—which has observed a 600% increase in on-chain transactions from 9M in 2021 to 56 in 2022—the community is defined much more by its users.

“We see the chain more as an enabler of that community,” Timsit said. “The reason there are various chains and various communities is the same reason you have countries and borders. Each chain has its own culture and community, and that’s very true of Cronos.”

Timsit breaks down the culture and community of Cronos—a community with over 1.1M unique users—into three main elements. The first is that it’s a chain built in partnership with Crypto.com, one of the world’s largest exchanges with 80M users around the world. According to Timsit, most users of Cronos are also users of Crypto.com, and part of the community who ventured into crypto during the last bull market.

The second element of the Cronos community is that it is a blockchain centered around gaming.

---

“We focus on gaming and entertainment as the context that provides utility to the metaverses and nonfungible tokens (NFTs), not having NFTs for the sake of just having them,” Timsit said. “It’s a chain that puts the focus on interoperability with other ecosystems, so we try to build bridges with other communities as much as we can.”

Part of building those bridges is through NFTs, with most of the NFTs existing on Cronos having some kind of utility as part of the games—either as proof of subscription or as in-game assets. As a result, most of the Cronos metaverses aren’t necessarily social, acting more as a backdrop for the entertainment or gaming experience.

It’s an experience that informs the third main element of Cronos: Communication. “It’s not like Cronos Labs is at the center and we’re pushing one-way communication to the users,” Timsit said. “There are multiple forums where users are communicating on a peer-to-peer basis with each other, successful Twitter Spaces, and a very active Discord which has hundreds of thousands of members.”

Those members, according to Timsit, even meet in real life when they’re traveling—especially after Covid.

“People don’t usually have their real identity on those forums, but they are still getting together in person when they travel,” Timsit said. “I’ve found this to be a very interesting phenomenon that bridges the community that exists in those gaming universes with the real humans behind them.”

In this way, gaming is bridging the gap between the online world and the physical world through shared gaming experiences and the competitions community members have with each other. It’s also part of the reason Cronos views its focus on gaming as a way to cut through the competitive blockchain landscape. But focusing on gaming isn’t the only variable Cronos believes will differentiate itself from the rest of the blockchain pack. Proving long-term sustainability is also one of the most important factors.

“You need a chain that is likely to stick around for a while and I think to some extent, those are table stakes amongst the top chains,” Timsit said. At the very least, Cronos meets that base requirement for the users.”

He continued, “I think the partnership with Crypto.com is very important because it’s a partnership with a centralized exchange, which aims to be the most regulated exchange around the world. That provides comfort in the minds of users that the chain is not separate from the real world, and for them, it’s the exchange that’s going to enable them to transfer fiat into crypto and crypto into fiat in a reliable way—in a way that hopefully makes gains in cryptocurrency that will be able to be brought back into their bank accounts.

---

The bet is if the money comes from a regulated exchange, banks will not close user accounts or ask questions pertaining to the source of their funds. According to Timsit, a chain that has regulated, established bridges to regulators and the real financial world is very important to Cronos users because of the credibility it provides.

For Cronos Labs and applications, the company also aims to exist as a blockchain that uses simple language in communication with its users and developers, putting an emphasis on the user experience more than the technology.

“We try to engage with users in a way that is suitable for users who are comfortable with the idea of crypto currency but who are not immersed in the technicalities of how it all works under the hood,” Timsit said.

Timsit echoes the growing viewpoint that web3’s evolution will lead tech to just be web3 and people won’t necessarily know.

Read more: Legitimate Partners with PUMA and Roc Nation to Launch a Blockchain-Powered Mixtape Sneaker Collection

However, potential partners with Cronos will know what’s under the hood, and it’s strategic partners like AWS and Google Cloud that make it easier for other potential partners and users to choose Cronos over another chain, with the Crypto.com partnership being largely helpful in building trust.

“Those partners are interested in mainstream adoption of crypto and are more likely to partner with chains and ecosystems that they believe have a path towards mass-market adoption,” Timsit said. “Again, mass-market adoption requires established relationships with banks and regulators, something that Crypto.com—and thus, Cronos—has.”

He continued, “We recently announced a partnership with Caldera, a company that helps developers and game creators to create layer 2 chains on top of Cronos specifically for their games with very low cost transactions. In this way, the focus on games is driving the developmental road map for Cronos, and we’re delivering to make sure game creators have those tools to enable cheap transactions for in-game interactions.”

---

But the main differentiator for Cronos in a crowded blockchain landscape? It all comes back to the community.

“We understand our users' needs and what they expect from blockchain and invested in developer tools to make sure the gaming ecosystem would emerge. Right now, that push is helping to sustain growth and make the chain attractive to its users,” said Timsit.

Timsit acknowledges that current ecosystem growth has slowed across all protocols and chains, meaning the current focus on gaming is really preparing the company for the next wave of adoption. “In 2024, we’re probably going to see tens of millions of users join the ecosystem, and at that point, having a rich gaming ecosystem is really going to make the difference.”