- After the hackathon, high-potential teams could also be given consideration for funding, incubation, or further ecosystem involvement.
- DoraHacks is already accepting registrations, and the build phase will begin in early December and end in late January.
In order to spur innovation in AI-native, on-chain payments, Cronos has introduced the x402 PayTech Hackathon, a worldwide builder challenge with a $42,000 USD prize pool. Developers are invited to explore new applications powered by the Crypto.com AI Agent SDK, x402 agentic payments, and developing infrastructure across the Cronos and Crypto.com ecosystem.
As Cronos moves closer to its larger goal of developing into a high-performance hub for institutional tokenization and AI-powered financial infrastructure, the hackathon gets underway. Cronos is now one of the most production-ready environments for intelligent on-chain systems because of recent upgrades that have lowered gas fees by ten times, boosted daily transactions by 400%, and cut block times to less than one second.
Automated settlement processes, AI-driven wallet activities, RWA integrations, interactions with the Crypto.com ecosystem, and new developer tools for AI agents will all be available for builders to test out. Developers may access real-world payment and asset infrastructure with integration pathways across the Cronos and Crypto.com ecosystem, potentially reaching millions of users worldwide.
“The x402 PayTech Hackathon represents the first wave of real-world experimentation where AI agents don’t just compute, but exchange value. With Cronos’ recent performance gains and its growing suite of AI-native tooling, teams now have the infrastructure they need to turn agentic applications into reality. We look forward to seeing builders transform these capabilities into practical applications that advance the industry,” said Mirko Zhao, Head of Cronos Labs.
Technical assistance, seminars, office hours, and an expanding collection of developer tools including Cronos EVM, x402 programmatic payments, and the Crypto.com AI Agent SDK will all be made available to participants. After the hackathon, high-potential teams could also be given consideration for funding, incubation, or further ecosystem involvement.
DoraHacks is already accepting registrations, and the build phase will begin in early December and end in late January. Supported by Crypto.com and more than 500 application developers and collaborators, Cronos is a prominent blockchain ecosystem with a global user base of over 150 million. The goal of Cronos is to develop the DeFi infrastructure that will enable billions of people to access, use, and comply with tokenized markets.
Three chains make up the Cronos universe: Cronos POS, a prominent Cosmos chain for payments and NFTs; Cronos EVM, the top Ethereum-compatible blockchain based on the Cosmos SDK; and Cronos zkEVM, a brand-new, high-performance layer 2 network secured by Ethereum.
With over 6 billion dollars in user assets, Cronos is one of the top 15 blockchain ecosystems. Over 100 million transactions have been securely settled since its beginning. Cronos ($CRO), a well-known cryptocurrency, is used to pay transaction fees. Cronos Labs, a Web3 start-up accelerator dedicated to DeFi, GameFi, and the growth of the Cronos ecosystem, supports Cronos.