CRO

Cronos (Crypto.com) · Exchange-affiliated L1 (Cronos POS + Cronos EVM gas)

24 /100

T4Speculative · #51 of 77

No engine yetTwo-way ↗medium likelihoodReviewed Oct 23, 2026

DemandSoundnessDurability

12 of 455 of 407 of 15

Key facts

SupplyFloat 51% of issued supply

Circulating 50.74B, 51%
Locked or unvested 48.26B, 48%
Not yet issued 1.00B, 1%
Max 100.00B

FDV / market cap

2.0x

$5.5B / $2.8B

Market cap

$2.8B

Price $0.055, 7d −4.6%

Market data: CoinGecko, Oct 24, 2026. Scores reviewed Oct 23, 2026.

Assessment

CRO is the clearest case on the board of an issuer rewriting supply: Crypto.com burned 70B CRO in 2021, then used a 62%-yes governance vote in Mar 2025 to mint 70B back into a reserve it runs, which now vests ~1.17B CRO a month (about 2.3% of float) into Crypto.com wallets until 2030. The reserve plus swept vested coins put over 60% of supply under one company, the chain's largest validators look issuer-run, and Cronos EVM is secured by a permissioned 'stake' token with four Cronos validators above the halt line. The engine is still a plan: Ult and Cronos Launch are five weeks old and the buy-and-burn contract is not live. The institutional story weakened in 2026: Trump Media's CRO treasury SPAC was terminated on Aug 7, the Truth Social Crypto Blue Chip ETF was withdrawn, and the US CRO ETF filings remain pending.

How value reaches holders

Almost nothing yet. Cronos POS mints CRO at 0.70%/yr (decaying 6.8% a month since the May 2026 v7 upgrade) and pays it to stakers, with 15% to the community pool; that pool's emissions are burned periodically by vote (4 x 50M through Mar 2025, 228M on Oct 3, 2026, 428M total), which recycles inflation rather than revenue. Prop 37 (passed Oct 3, 2026, signalling only) commits 100% of Ult and Cronos Launch revenue to monthly on-chain buy-and-burn, but the contract is in development and no revenue has been published; the same vote commits the 70B Strategic Reserve to backfill staking rewards as emissions decay. Cronos EVM fees (~$0.12M a year) go to its validators

Score anatomy

Demand

12 / 45: the stronger of two routes, plus adoption

Why would anyone hold it: does value reach the token, and is the network or product used today?

Holder routing engine input

Prop 37 (passed Oct 3, 2026) commits 100% of Ult and Cronos Launch revenue to buy and burn CRO, but it is a signalling vote and the burn contract is still in development: approved but inert

Approved or designed but inert, indirect sinks only, or flows into a treasury or endowmenthigh confidenceHow this is scored

Revenue reality engine input

Cronos EVM fees were ~$0.12M over the trailing year (DefiLlama) and Cronos POS fees are negligible; Ult and Cronos Launch launched Sep 15-17, 2026 with no revenue published

Under $0.5M/yr, or emissions-subsidized onlymedium confidenceHow this is scored

Monetary usage engine input

Gas on Cronos EVM and Cronos POS; Crypto.com card and app locks are perks inside the issuer's own ecosystem, and no third-party collateral use was found

Pays its own network's fees (gas never counts higher, whatever the size of the economy)high confidenceHow this is scored

Adoption ×3

Crypto.com is a mid-tier exchange; Cronos EVM fees $0.35M TTM (-84%) and TVL $0.14B (-73% YoY)

Niche: real but small use, far behind its category leadersmedium confidenceHow this is scored

Two routes, the stronger counts

Revenue 0, minus 4 for routing 1 = cash flow 0. Money use 1. The engine is the stronger route: 1.

Soundness

5 / 40

Can a long-term holder trust the rules: supply, float, distribution and control?

Supply discipline ×3

Prop 29 (passed Mar 17, 2025, 62% yes) minted 70B CRO into a Crypto.com-run reserve, raising supply from ~30B toward the 100B cap; current inflation 0.70%/yr, decaying 6.8% a month

7-15%/yr, or the issuance schedule was raised in the last 24 monthshigh confidenceHow this is scored

Float and unlocks ×1

51% float (50.7B of 99.0B issued): the reserve vests 1.167B CRO a month to Mar 2030, ~2.3% of float per month, and vested coins are swept to another Crypto.com wallet (13.8B there)

1.5-3% of float unlocking per monthhigh confidenceHow this is scored

Distribution ×2

Crypto.com received all 100B genesis CRO and then the 70B re-mint (no public sale); its reserve still holds 47.8B unvested CRO (48% of supply), plus 13.8B vested in one wallet

Insiders received over 50%, or one organization directs over 30% todayhigh confidenceHow this is scored

Decentralization and security ×2

Four Cronos-run validators hold 40% of Cronos EVM power (non-CRO 'stake' token, 27 validators); on Cronos POS six anonymous validators with the same '*' site field hold 40%, over the 1/3 halt line

One operator, pool, company or key can halt, rewrite, freeze balances, or upgrade value-holding contracts without delaymedium confidenceHow this is scored

Durability

7 / 15

Is it big, proven and reachable by institutions?

Scale ×1

$2.9B market cap (band 4), $7.6M/day median volume (band 2), no flags.

Small: $50-250M market cap and $1M/day+How this is scored

Track record ×1

Genesis Nov 14, 2018 (7.9 years); survived a 95% drawdown from the Nov 2021 high, and no unplanned chain halt or $50M exploit was found

5-8 years and survived an 80%+ drawdownmedium confidenceHow this is scored

Institutional access ×1

Coinbase and other top-tier spot listings; US filings pending (Canary Staked CRO ETF S-1/A May 8, 2026; 21Shares Cronos ETF S-1 Mar 13, 2026) with no product effective

OTC trust, non-US product, or a pending US filinghigh confidenceHow this is scored

What would move it up

To reach T3 Mixed, 2 gates are still open:

Score 24needs 40(open)
Value engine 1needs 2(open)
Adoption 2gate 2(met)
Supply 1gate 1(met)

Tier outlook · next trigger Mar 18, 2027

Two-way ↗medium likelihood

Mar 18, 2027: the 70B re-mint leaves the 24-month window, so supply moves from 1 to the DPoS cap of 3 unless the schedule changes again
The Prop 37 buy-and-burn contract going live and its first monthly burn hashes and amounts (routed and revenue)
Strategic Reserve flows: 1.167B CRO a month leaves cro198...7f4h; whether it funds staking or reaches the market
SEC action on the Canary Staked CRO and 21Shares Cronos ETFs (access 2 to 3)
Trump Media's 756M CRO (first sale window from Aug 26, 2026) and Cronos validator concentration

Research report

Oct 23, 2026 · source confidence 80%

CRO is the native token of the Cronos chains, built and largely run by Crypto.com. Its supply history is unusual. Crypto.com created 100 billion tokens in 2018, burned 70 billion in 2021, and in March 2025 a governance vote it proposed minted 70 billion back into a Cronos Strategic Reserve. That reserve releases about 1.17 billion tokens a month until 2030, and the released tokens have been moved to other Crypto.com wallets, so the circulating supply grew about 41% over the past year. New issuance from staking is small and falling (0.70% a year, decaying monthly) under a 100 billion cap that governance can change. Value capture is still prospective: an October 2026 vote commits all revenue from two new Cronos products to buying and burning CRO, but the burn contract is in development, and on-chain fee revenue was about $0.1 million over the past year. Control is concentrated: the reserve and related wallets hold over 60% of supply, and a few validators that appear to be run by Cronos hold more than a third of voting power on both Cronos chains. US spot ETF applications are pending, while a planned CRO treasury company with Trump Media was cancelled in August 2026.

Structure (12 facts)

Chain: native on Cronos POS (crypto-org-chain-mainnet-1, Cosmos SDK, basecro 8 decimals, chain-main v8 since 2026-07-14) and gas on Cronos EVM (cronosmainnet_25-1) and Cronos zkEVM; Ethereum ERC-20 0xa0b7...450b is the 2018 token (minting finished, 86.85B at 0x...dead, ~13.1B live)
Supply history: 100B created at genesis (Nov 2018) for Crypto.com; 70B burned at the Feb 2021 mainnet launch; Prop 29 (submitted 2025-03-03, passed 2025-03-17: yes 4.61B, abstain 1.49B, no 1.31B, veto 0.01B CRO) re-minted 70B to the Cronos Strategic Reserve at the v5.0.0 upgrade, 'to bring the total supply back to 100 Billion' for US initiatives, ETF seeding and AI grants, and cut inflation_max from 3.7% to 1%
Supply now: total 98,997,101,967 CRO on-chain (2026-10-23); CoinGecko circulating 50.74B, up from 36.05B a year earlier (+41%, ~1.2B a month); max 100B enforced in x/inflation since v7 (governance-adjustable)
Strategic reserve: cro198pra975lcj526974r80fflr6retphnl3l7f4h, PeriodicVestingAccount, 70B original vesting, 60 monthly periods of 1.1667B from 2025-03-18 to 2030-03-17; balance 47.83B (all unvested); every vested tranche is sent out monthly, since Feb 2026 to cro1h9ql6...9e2v, which holds 13.78B and has sent 1.55B onward
Emission: v7 (Prop 33, passed 2026-05-19, live ~2026-05-20): inflation pinned at 1% then decays 6.8% a month; 0.70% on 2026-10-23 (annual provisions ~693M CRO), ~0.48B CRO over the next 12 months; 15% community tax to the community pool; tiered locks +2/+4/+7% APY with a 3% base rate topped up from a rewards pool
Burns: community-pool burns of emissions: 50M each via Props 18, 26, 28, 30 and 228M via Prop 36 (2026-10-03) = 428M; Prop 37 (signalling, passed 2026-10-03, 99.8% yes): 100% of Ult and Cronos Launch revenue to monthly on-chain buy-and-burn (contract in development) and the Strategic Reserve to backfill staking rewards
Governance: quorum 33.4%, threshold 50%, veto 33.4%, 14-day voting; Props 36 and 37 passed with ~7.0B yes and zero no
Validators: Cronos POS: 100 bonded, 14.48B CRO bonded (14.6% of supply); top 4 = 39.0% (Figment 12.4%, Electron 11.4%, Antares 7.8%, New Shepard 7.4%); anonymous validators with website '*' (Electron, Antares, New Shepard, Minotaur IV, Falcon Heavy, Starship) = 39.7%; one delegator (cro1x8s4...j744) spreads 2.85B (19.7% of bonded) evenly over five validators and another (cro16dce...5qj) 1.52B (10.5%) over five more. Cronos EVM: 27 validators bonded in a non-CRO 'stake' denom; Pioneer 11 (cronos.org), Huygens, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 at 10.1% each
Revenue: Cronos EVM fees ~$119K over the trailing year (DefiLlama); Crypto.com Liquid Staking ~$198K (Crypto.com product); Ult (2026-09-17) and Cronos Launch (2026-09-15) revenue not yet published
Institutional: Canary Staked CRO ETF (CIK 2069288): S-1 2025-05-30, S-1/A 2026-01-12 and 2026-05-08, not effective; 21Shares Cronos ETF S-1 2026-03-13; Truth Social Crypto Blue Chip ETF (5% CRO) withdrawn 2026-05-19; a Truth Social Cronos/Bitcoin/Ether '40 Act fund repeatedly extended (485BXT 2026-07-30); Trump Media Group CRO Strategy SPAC (Yorkville MCGA, Crypto.com, TMTG) terminated 2026-08-07 'due to market conditions'; TMTG holds 756,079,523 CRO (cost $113.9M, $40.6M at 2026-06-30), sale-restricted with 68.4M sellable from 2026-08-26; Canary Capital runs a 510M CRO validator
Liquidity: CoinGecko 24h $4.4M; 30-day median $8.2M/day (~0.29% of market cap); largest tickers CoinUp.io, Crypto.com Exchange, OKX, Coinbase
Market cap (approx): $2,875,000,000

Market figures at report date (Oct 23, 2026)

Price (approx): $0.0566
All-time high / low: 0.8915 (2021-11-23), now -94%; low 0.0462 (2026-08-20); -60% over 1y

Sources (17)

Compare with

How the ranking works and how CRO compares: see the full ranking. This entry as JSON:

GET https://tokens.10102.io/api/v1/tokenomics?symbol=CRO