Seeing a "blood in the streets" opportunity to establish a position with Crypto.org, I added a nice stake (while still MCO, an ERC20 token on ETH) to my portfolio in the March 2020 "crypto crash" resulting from the initial COVID-19 global panic.

^{Source: Creator Geralt on Pixabay}

I was frankly disappointed with its "coming out party" and conversion to CRO launching on its own blockchain in August 2020. So ... 🤷‍♂️ Like the rest of my portfolio, I decided to just HODL and wait for its day to arrive.

Flash forward to a rapidly occurring sequence just this month:

The announcement, on 8 November 2021, of Crypto.com's support for a new EVM-based blockchain - Cronos! Along with some initial info on how to bridge assets across to it ...

The announcement, on 16 November 2021, that Singapore-based Crypto.com had reached an incredible $700 million agreement to rename the Staples Center in Los Angeles to Crypto.com Arena!

The market's response, with CRO increasing from ~ $0.21 on November 1st to over $0.80 as this is written. This is down from almost reaching $1.00 a few days ago, but there has been a market correction to ... Yep! The latest global COVID-19 fears!! 😏🤷‍♂️

Watching this, the timing of @revisesociology's recent #leoalpha post on Cronos came at the perfect time. I laid aside some other projects and decided I needed to move some of my CRO stake into "action" rather than just have it sit there "parked."

Now, what direction to take ... 🤔

^{Source: Creator OpenClipart-Vectors on Pixabay}

No disrespect intended to @revisesociology's approach to this question, but I intended to invest the time to (hopefully) achieve another objective at the same time. Get my rapidly increasing CRO $$s stored on Crypto.com's Android app (the only option available in August 2020) off of it!

I am personally just not a fan of these "centralized" phone apps, as I distrust the security they offer. Certainly compared to a "decentralized" desktop app on my PC, backed by my Ledger.

Thankfully, as anticipated, I found there was a new Crypto.com Chain Desktop wallet, with Ledger support backed by its new Ledger Live CRO app.

So far so good, right? Yes, well, I was in for the most complicated "ride" of my almost 4-½ years in this new digital asset class. What I initially thought might take me a couple of hours took several days!

Let's take a closer look ... 🧐

Initial Considerations

My initial project requirements list seemed pretty reasonable:

Get all assets off of the Android Crypto.com app, as mentioned above.

Establish Ledger-backed security throughout. While I was sure this should not be a problem with the Cronos blockchain side, I was less sure on the Crypto.com mainnet side.

Knowing there were CRO LPs on Osmosis, splitting up putting my long-HODLed CRO to work, by investing some into both Osmosis and Cronos.

Stake some CRO, on a Ledger-backed wallet, if that option was available.

In confirming my determination to achieve the 1st objective, there was a bit of waivering, given the difficulties detailed in the post sections below. Upon finding the app did not allow you to specify your preferred ETH-based address (like any other EVM-based blockchain), that settled it for me. Not taking that route ...

Now there was just the small matter of transferring my complete CRO stake to a Ledger-backed wallet, then bridging a portion of it into some DeFi opportunities. Currently, there are 3 options:

Following the path mapped out by @revisesociology in his post and use the Android (probably an iOS version as well) app. As detailed above, I was not going to take that route.

The "safest, fastest, and most secure" route, using the Cronos bridge.

The Cronos Bridge built in to the Crypto.org Chain desktop wallet.

There are also two chains listed on Crodex:

The Relay cross-chain bridge, which at the time I looked into it had only one token. Which was? Wait for it ... The RELAY token!? 🙄🤷‍♂️

The AnySwap cross-chain protocol. At the time I looked into it, I could not find a single token which you could move into Cronos. 🤔😏

I suspect the last two, especially AnySwap, will be a viable option, at some point in the future. Perhaps even the near future. For this post, however, they were not.

So ...

I focused my efforts on #2 and #3 above.

Option #2 - The Cronos Bridge Website

Initial impressions, when I first opened this option, was it would be quick and easy. And, of course, I liked the claim of it being the "safest, fastest, and most secure," without knowing whether it had any merit or not.

Not ...

^{A simple 1 - 2 step process to execute, right?}

Two simple steps:

Select From and To options. Easy, as there is only one - crypto.org on one side and cronos on the other!

Select the asset to bridge across. Again, easy, as there is only one - CRO!

After connecting two wallets - one for CRO and one for Cronos - it was relatively straightforward, right?

Nope!

First, you learn that "Crypto.org" is referring to yet another Chrome wallet extension you have to install!? The Crypto.com Wallet extension. Great. Another wallet extension to mess with ...

Well, it must Ledger-backed and pretty straightforward, right?

Nope! Not going to get off that easy ...

The Crypto.com Wallet extension is about as basic as you can get, primitive even! I would call it practically a "shell." To do what? Relay your bridging request to the ... wait for it ... Crypto.com DeFi wallet on my Android phone! 🤦‍♂️

Good grief!

I had (left out the gory details of that mess, from this post) finally gotten my entire CRO stake moved off my phone into my Ledger-backed Crypto.com Chain wallet! Arrggghhh ...

^{Okay, okay ... One gory detail ... 😉 To successfully engage with Crypto.com on your phone you need two apps - their Crypto.com and DeFi Wallet apps. And ... They are supposed to be linked. Except ... My attempts to link them repeatedly ended with an "Unknown Error" failure. So ... Contacted their "tech support" and provided them with details:}

^{Good news: Not expecting much, I was pleasantly surprised they got back to me within ~ 12 hours.}

^{Bad news: I was told the devs were aware of the problem and working on it. Expect a quick turn around / resolution. Nope! That would be too easy ...}

To be concise, here are the steps I then followed:

Tried again to reconnect the Android wallet and app. Nope!

Captured the "Receive" address on the Android wallet app, as that was the app to which the Crypto.com wallet extension was going to relay the request for confirmation. But ... First ... I had to get some CRO in there ...

Gave Ledger-backed approval to move CRO out of my Chain wallet into the Android DeFi wallet app. Worked great the 1st time, right? Nope!

Again leaving out most of the gory details, I did finally succeed in getting some back into the DeFi wallet app. So ... With all of these details now resolved, I was able to go back to the Cronos Bridge website and execute a bridge without any problems, right? What would be your first guess? 😏

^{My Chronos Bridge Transaction History}

Note the dates in this list. When my first attempt failed, I moved to attempting to get CRO across the Cronos Bridge in my Crypto.com Chain desktop wallet. When that failed (details in the next section), I came back to this, since by that time ...

My funds had been restored! Yes, restored, since even though that 1st transaction says "failed" my CRO was gone! Fortunately, as a well-established "best practice" with me now, I had only sent a small "test" amount.

So ...

Why restored? Because Crypto.com had an intermediary blockchain set up between its own mainnet and its new EVM-based blockchain on Cronos. The IBC-based Cosmos blockchain! What I knew from my previous experience with Cosmos and the Osmosis blockchain built on it, was:

Good news: A failed transaction gets fully restored (minus a transaction fee, of course ...), pretty much without fail, even though initially the funds are gone within a minute or less.

Bad news: It can take hours to be restored. In my worst cases, 12 to 15 hours.

After two more failed attempts to send larger amounts of CRO across the bridge and re-empty my phone app, I eventually succeeded. 4 days after I started ...

Option #3 - Cronos Bridge in the Crypto.org Chain wallet

To begin, note in the image below the same claim of being the "safest, fastest, and most secure," which by now I obviously was skeptical of, as you might guess. Also, it is not possible for both of these bridges to make that claim, since they take different routes to accomplish the objective of bridging funds. "There can be only one ..."

^{Cronos Bridge in the Crypto.com Chain desktop wallet.}

To not belabor the many details of what followed, given their similarities to those covered in the section above, I will provide simply an outline, in the sequence of their occurrence:

Opened Ledger Live and installed the Crypto.com app on my Ledger X.

Having literally installed and upgraded desktop wallets over a hundred times in my ~ 4-½ yrs. doing this, the initial wallet installation was uneventful. Key to what followed, though, is that I had to sign 2 transactions on my Ledger, 1 for the CRO app and 1 for the ETH app.

"Multi-tasking" and not paying careful enough attention, I executed the 1st bridge transaction, which ... Failed! 🤦‍♂️🤷‍♂️🙄 (see trans history image below)

In evaluating this failure, I noted the Cronos (ETH) address was not the one I wanted! Only #1 (image above) was operational at that point and I had just not paid close enough attention to this detail.

I logged an issue on GitHub to get this addressed ASAP, i.e. give users the ability to specify their desired Cronos (ETH) address, rather than having it imposed. Surprise! Surprise! 2 days later, a new release came out with #2 (image above) available! 👍

With funds from 1st attempt restored and now specifying my desired Cronos (ETH) address, executed a 2nd attempt. Failed again!

With funds restored a 2nd time, again executed a transaction which was successful! Oh wait a minute! It still went to the imposed address, rather than the one I specified! Good grief, is this nightmare ever going to end ...

(I once again logged an update to the same issue on GitHub and still waiting for a response ...)

^{My Chain Wallet's Cronos Bridge Transaction History}

To overcome this problem (#7 above), I had to dig into the various ways ETH addresses are listed on Rabby (would be the same exercise on MetaMask), find how this new wallet had selected an empty one in there somewhere, activate it, and then execute a Send transaction in Rabby to get my CRO on Cronos into my desired address.

Wow. Are we having fun yet!?

Throughout this ordeal, as one might imagine, my enthusiasm for moving any significant amount of CRO tokens / $$s into Cronos grew dimmer and dimmer. I just decided too much of what I had experienced had a definite "not ready for prime time" feel to it. And I would be better off to wait until there are clear indications a lot of these initial problems are resolved.

Done! CRO Investment Status ...

Here is where I have ended up, in order of my perception of increased risk:

My biggest investment is simply staking in my Ledger-backed Crypto.com Chain Desktop wallet. Paying in the 15% to 16% APR range.

Next is my investment in the CRO-OSMO LP on Osmosis. Currently paying ~ 115% APR. I will watch this for the next little bit and will likely increase it, before the year is out, given how favorably I view the Osmosis ecosystem.

^{Note: I did not cover moving CRO into Osmosis, as it was smooth and painless!}

A smallish "trial" investment (after all of this work!? 🙄) in the CRO-USDC LP on VVS Finance, currently the biggest platform (as this is written) on Cronos. Currently paying ~ 336% APR.

With the "dust now settled," at least I have my CRO $$s in Ledger-backed apps and making $$s now 24 / 7 / 365 vs. just "idling" along, while being HODLed in an Android phone app. 👍🚀

Closing

While I have resolutely persevered through all of this to finally have a position on the Cronos blockchain, I am sure you can tell I am a long way from being favorably impressed with it. At least so far, as much as I truly want to be.

Only 4-½ yrs of experience in this still immature marketplace kept me going. And, at the end of it all, I will mark all this down to just that - the Cronos blockchain is still in its infancy and has a long way to go. Particularly if it wants to "grow up" someday to challenge the Binance Smart Chain, as the reigning "champ" of all the growing number of EVM-based alternatives to ETH. If Crypto.com can invest $700 million to name a building after itself, I would assume they may have the resources to pull it off!

What became clear to me was a significant part of the challenge is how Crypto.com has chosen to partner with Cosmos and its IBC-based "cryptosphere." While I do not know the technical details, I am sure the "complication factor" is greatly magnified by trying to tie 3 different blockchains together vs. 2.

Off in the future, I may post an update on how this is going. For now, as always, I’d love to hear any feedback you may be inspired to provide.

Until "next time," all the best to you for a better tomorrow, as we all work together to build up our Hive Communities and add increasing value to our Hive blockchain!  

Respectfully, Blogger @roleerob Hive "Dolphin" 🐬, LeoFinance "Whale" 🐋, & Man Cave "Dragon" 🐉

P.S. I am not a financial adviser. Please consider this post as financial information and / or opinion only. Please perform your own due diligence, in whatever manner seems best to you, if you have found it to be beneficial.

Posted using LeoFinance and “immutably enshrined” in the Hive blockchain on Saturday, 27 November 2021!
🌲 No trees were harmed in the publishing of this post! 🌲

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Exploring Routes to the new Cronos Blockchain