- Cronos EVM v1.5.0 was officially launched today, October 30.
- This upgrade introduces new EVM opcodes, smart accounts and improved operability.
- Smarturn targets a more flexible, faster, and developer-friendly blockchain.
The Cronos blockchain has announced the rollout of the anticipated “Smarturn” upgrade, ushering in a new phase of the network’s evolution.
This update delivers significant improvements across the Cronos Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), including better operability, enhanced ecosystem performance and smoother wallet functionality.
According to the announcement:
This mainnet upgrade marks a major leap in Cronos’ evolution — unlocking smart accounts, new EVM features, and improved performance for developers and users alike.
🚀 Cronos EVM upgrade complete — “Smarturn” is here!
This mainnet upgrade marks a major leap in Cronos’ evolution — unlocking smart accounts, new EVM features, and improved performance for developers and users alike.
Here’s what’s new 👇
— Cronos (@cronos_chain) October 30, 2025
The network paused operations for roughly 60 minutes to integrate the new components.
Services were then gradually restored as the Cronos ecosystem completed the upgrade milestones.
Smarturn aims to transform Cronos by delivering higher speed and broader compatibility through its new features.
Smarter accounts arrive on Cronos
At the core of this upgrade is support for the advanced EIP-7702 smart account model. With this feature, ordinary user wallets (Externally Owned Accounts, EOAs) can behave like smart contract wallets.
This unlocks capabilities that previously required different account types. The official blog explained:
EIP-7702 narrows that gap by allowing EOAs to act like smart contracts. The provided contract code remains valid until the account issues a new authorization, which can be applied to a single chain or across multiple chains simultaneously.
Users can now perform a broader range of actions without switching account types, including flexible gas payment methods, customizable authorizations, batching multiple transactions, and programmable wallet behavior.
By adopting EIP-7702, Cronos joins a set of EVM-compatible platforms that offer account abstraction, combining automated controls with simplicity.
This capability is expected to advance DeFi and decentralized applications (dApps) on Cronos by improving efficiency and user experience.
Significant performance improvements
Cronos also upgraded its EVM implementation to run on go-Ethereum v1.15.11, aligning with Ethereum’s Prague and Cancun improvements.
The update is designed to make contract execution and transactions cheaper and faster.
Additionally, it brings comprehensive client improvements and new EVM opcodes on Cronos to boost efficiency, developer experience and debugging. The team noted:
These opcodes collectively make contract execution more efficient for complex DeFi protocols, game contracts that perform multiple operations per transaction, and other compute-heavy applications.
Taken together, these changes make Cronos EVM runtimes faster, lighter and more developer-centric.
Improved operability and tooling
Smarturn also enhances infrastructure for builders and cross-chain developers.
For example, new RPC endpoints now allow retrieval of full block data with a single query.
This benefits dApp backends, analytics dashboards and blockchain explorers.
In addition, the mempool now enables users to cancel or speed up pending transactions, improving responsiveness during periods of high network load.
Furthermore, Cronos adopted IBC v2 via ibc-go v10.1.1 to strengthen cross-chain communication.
CRO price outlook
The token traded around $0.1470 after falling roughly 1.5% over the past 24 hours.
Daily trading volume plunged more than 60%, indicating subdued market enthusiasm.
However, CRO’s movement reflects broader market sentiment.
Bitcoin traded below the $110,000 level after losing about 3% of its value in the prior 24 hours.
Markets lost momentum following Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s cautious comments about a potential December rate cut.