Users in Web3 will do much more than just trade crypto: Cronos’ Ken Timsit (interview)

In a recent interview with The crypto potato during EthCC 5 in Paris, Ken Timsit, CEO of the Cronos chain and Cronos Labs, outlined the network’s advantages over other competitors, talked about the current bear cycle and what Cronos is doing in preparation for the next bull run, the future of the Internet and crypto, and much more.

Cronos chain vs. Cronos Labs vs. Crypto.com

The Cronos chain is a relatively new blockchain network supported by the popular crypto exchange – CryptoCom – that interacts with both the Ethereum and Cosmos ecosystems. It is powered by Ethermint, which enables the porting of dapps and smart contracts from Ethereum and EVM compatible chains.

It doesn’t have a founder “because it’s an open-source project created by the Cosmos community that was later picked up by a team and put into production,” Timsit said.

Being backed by CryptoCom means that all exchange users can operate on the Cronos blockchain, as well as all CRO holders (the company’s native cryptocurrency). As such, Timsit estimated the total number of addressable users to be around 50 million at the time of this interview.

So far, however, only about a million have “migrated and created an account on the Cronos chain,” and the number of third-party applications created on the blockchain is about 300.

Cronos Labs, on the other hand, serves as the foundation for advancing the Cronos ecosystem. It manages a $100 million accelerator program, released in June, that looks to invest in early-stage crypto startups likely to create the most innovative projects on Cronos.

However, Timsit emphasized that his team does not believe in “walled gardens” and encourages Cronos applicants to also become multi-chain.

The director also informed that not all projects that want to benefit from the program need to have their own native token because “often if you only use NFTs as assets in the game, just having NFTs is sufficient to create a business model.”

However, when it comes down to DeFi protocols, Timsit believes they should have a native coin, as they generally have many stakeholders.

“You’re using the token to make sure that each actor has the right incentives to behave the way you want them to behave. So that’s why tokens are often useful for that particular reason. But on our end, we’re really are interested in applications that find a way to charge their users transaction fees or monetize the protocol.”

Crypto.com Recent Layoffs Effects

When asked if Crypto.com’s staff reductions had any impact on the two projects he leads, Timsit assured that they are separate organizations, saying, “Cronos and Cronos Labs are independent from CryptoCom in terms of businesses and entities.”

Nevertheless, the management admitted that they were also affected by the falling market prices and user interest. The strategies have changed since it doesn’t make sense to spend too much on marketing now as it did before several months ago.

He added that the daily transactions right now are somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 on the Cronos network, and that they peaked just before the recent market crash at nearly 500,000.

Total Value Locked (TVL) peaked at $5 billion, but is now down to $1.5 billion. Still, this makes it the fifth largest EVM chain, Timsit claimed.

“Does much more than just trading crypto”

With so many giant VCs backing new projects from the oft-lauded Web3 gaming and metaverse vertical, Timsit also weighed in on the topic. He described it as a virtual realm that allows “self-storage of assets and direct integration with smart contracts.”

“Our vision is that this is the future of crypto. So for anyone currently trading crypto, buying and selling crypto, we believe the next step for them is to use DeFi and Web3 gaming so they can do more than just trade crypto. They can borrow and lend assets that have meaning and utility in these virtual worlds; they can invest these assets in various return-generating protocols.”

However, he argued that Web3 can only reach its full potential in environments “where you have applications that are compatible and composable with each other, which is the strength of the EVM ecosystem..”