Introducing the Cronos Gravity Bridge Testnet “Pioneer 11”
After months of preparations and community backing, we are excited to announce the Cronos Gravity Bridge testnet “Pioneer 11” launch on 28…
After months of preparations and community backing, we are excited to announce the Cronos Gravity Bridge testnet “Pioneer 11” launch on 28 June, 2022. Cronos Gravity Bridge aims to connect Cronos with the Ethereum network, funneling additional liquidity into the Cronos ecosystem.
Cronos Gravity Bridge is poised to be positioned as the canonical decentralised bridge between Cronos and Ethereum mainnet.
The Pioneer 11 testnet is a dedicated testnet created specifically for the purpose of testing the Cronos Gravity Bridge. It connects to the Ethereum Goerli testnet. It is distinct from the official Cronos testnet (https://evm-t3.cronos.org) which is used by app developers to test their Dapps.
What is Cronos Gravity Bridge?
Cronos Gravity Bridge is derived from an open source project of the Cosmos community, the PeggyJV gravity bridge, which aims to bridge any Cosmos chain with the Ethereum network. The gravity bridge technology allows the transfer of ERC20 cryptocurrency tokens from and to Ethereum through a mint/lock mechanism. This means that:
When a user sends assets from Ethereum to Cronos, the corresponding ERC20 token is locked in a smart contract on the Ethereum side, and minted on the Cronos side in the form of a CRC20 token.
When a user sends assets from Cronos to Ethereum, the corresponding CRC20 token is burned on the Cronos side, and the ERC20 token is released on the Ethereum side.
The Cronos Gravity Bridge testnet “Pioneer 11” involves:
A solidity smart contract on the Ethereum testnet (“CronosGravity.sol”), which holds the native ERC20 assets being sent across the bridge.
A set of orchestrators and relayer(s) which are in charge of synchronising the state of Ethereum and Cronos (testnets). In the gravity bridge model, each Cronos validator is expected to run an orchestrator, which means that the decentralisation / security model of the bridge is the same as that of the Cronos chain. The role of the relayer(s) is to send signed updates to the Gravity Bridge contract on Ethereum, while earning fees from the transactions batch.
A Cosmos SDK module which is in charge of minting assets at the Cosmos layer of Cronos chain, subject to consensus among the Cronos validators.
A Cronos hook module which allows the automatic conversion between the assets at the Cosmos layer of Cronos chain, and the equivalent assets at the EVM (Ethereum compatible) layer of Cronos chain.
The Cronos Gravity Bridge documentation is published here.
What Happens Now?
The Pioneer 11 testnet binary is released as v0.8.0-gravity-alpha0. On the Pioneer 11 testnet, the gravity bridge module is directly incorporated into Cronos, bringing its features to the Cronos testnet.
The Pioneer 11 testnet is a dedicated testnet created specifically for the purpose of testing the Cronos Gravity Bridge. It connects to the Ethereum Goerli testnet. It is distinct from the official Cronos testnet (https://evm-t3.cronos.org) which is used by app developers to test their Dapps.
For testers, the following setup guides are available:
Hosting a testnet node: link
MetaMask configuration: link
Dedicated block explorer: link
Pioneer 11 testnet faucet: link
Pioneer 11 detailed release notes are available here.
What’s Next?
The launch of the Pioneer 11 testnet is a stepping stone towards a new paradigm of interoperability for Cronos chain. In the near future, we can expect new functionalities and innovative opportunities between the Ethereum and Cronos app ecosystems.
Meanwhile, during the coming months, the Cronos protocol engineering team will continue to add more features and monitor the performance of the Cronos Gravity Bridge Testnet, paving the way towards the deployment of Cronos Gravity Bridge on Cronos mainnet.
At this early stage, there is no definitive timeframe yet for the deployment of Cronos Gravity Bridge to Cronos mainnet, but the teams are working as hard as possible to ensure a safe experience for users.
For feedback and questions, please email contact@cronoslabs.org or connect to the Discord.
Cronos team