- Cronos EVM v1.5.0 officially launched today, October 30.
- The upgrade introduces new EVM opcodes, smart accounts, and improved interoperability.
- “Smarturn” aims for a more flexible, faster, and developer-friendly blockchain.
The Cronos blockchain announced the rollout of its long-awaited Smarturn upgrade, ushering in a new phase of network development.
This mainnet update brings meaningful enhancements to the Cronos Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), including greater interoperability, improved ecosystem performance, and seamless wallet capabilities.
According to the announcement:
This mainnet upgrade represents a major step in Cronos’ evolution — unlocking smart accounts, new EVM features, and enhanced performance for both developers and users.
🚀 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 briefly for roughly 60 minutes to integrate the new components.
Services have since been gradually restored as the Cronos ecosystem passes this important milestone.
Smarturn sets out to transform Cronos by delivering improved speed and compatibility through several technical innovations.
Smart accounts arrive on Cronos
At the heart of the Smarturn upgrade is advanced support for EIP-7702 smart accounts. With this feature, regular user wallets (externally owned accounts, EOAs) can behave like smart contract wallets.
This abstraction unlocks capabilities that previously required different account types. As the official blog notes:
EIP-7702 bridges this gap by allowing EOAs to act as smart contracts. The assigned contract code remains in effect until the account issues a new authorization, which can apply to a single chain or across multiple chains simultaneously.
Users can now carry out a variety of actions without changing account types, including flexible gas payment methods, customizable permissions, batching multiple transactions, and programmable wallet behavior.
By adopting EIP-7702, Cronos joins a small set of EVM-compatible platforms that offer this level of account abstraction, combining automated control with simplicity.
This functionality will benefit DeFi platforms and decentralized applications (dApps) on Cronos by improving efficiency and usability.
Significant performance improvements
Cronos upgraded its EVM implementation to run on go-Ethereum v1.15.11, aligning with Ethereum’s Prague and Cancun upgrades.
The update aims to reduce cost and increase speed for contract execution and transactions.
It also brings broad client enhancements and new EVM opcodes to improve efficiency, developer experience, and debugging. The team explained:
These opcodes collectively make contract execution more efficient for complex DeFi protocols, game contracts that handle multiple operations per transaction, and other computation-heavy applications.
Taken together, these changes make running Cronos EVM faster, lighter, and more developer-centric.
Improved interoperability and developer tools
Smarturn also strengthens the cross-chain infrastructure for builders and developers.
A new RPC endpoint, for example, enables retrieval of full block data in a single query.
That capability benefits dApp backends, analytics dashboards, and blockchain explorers.
The mempool now allows users to cancel or accelerate pending transactions, improving responsiveness during periods of heavy network load.
Cronos has also adopted IBC v2 via ibc-go v10.1.1 to enhance cross-chain communication.
CRO price outlook
CRO traded near $0.1470 after slipping roughly 1.5% over the prior 24 hours.
Its daily trading volume plunged by more than 60%, signaling waning short-term enthusiasm.
Nevertheless, CRO’s movement mirrors broader market sentiment.
Bitcoin traded below the key $110,000 level after falling nearly 3% in the previous 24 hours.
Markets cooled following cautious comments from Fed Chair Powell about the likelihood of a rate cut in December.