Crypto.com Chain is another project that was launched by the Hong Kong-based payment and crypto platform company Crypto.com or better known as CRO Protocol Labs. The chain has its own Crypto.com Chain token which allows the users to make cryptocurrency payments to as many merchants as possible. This is done by making the CRO currency which will allow for the conversion of cryptocurrencies to fiat at a much reduced cost.

The crypto.com Chain team hopes to combine the token’s ambition with the adoption support that was inspired by real-life use cases. Tracing back to 2018, the CRO token and the Crypto.com Chain project made headlines in early 2019 based on the token’s dramatic price increase which reached to the top 50 position on the CoinMarketCap’s ranking from the lower top 100.

Crypto.com Chain is labeled as the ‘’next generation’’ platform which should bring together the merchants and users on a public blockchain capable of supporting instant and cost-efficient and secure transactions among them. This is done by allowing the Chain to tackle some of the issues which are described as the main tools on the blockchain’s path to wider adoption.
The crypto project is supposed to offer high scalability and fast payment processing. The chain is designed as the payment network which aims to provide payment confirmations while also supporting the scaling in line with the number of transactions. With the help of the decentralized protocol, the target confirmation on the chain is set at being less than a second while the platform promised to support 50,000 transactions per second. Crypto.com Chain will get rid of the traditional fiat payment structures and the team stated that the traditional payment platforms as being resistant to changes such as the introduction of new currencies and removal of the strict rules which are imposed on the merchants.

The crypto project sees decentralization as the shortcut to make the crypto payments a mainstream option. The chain should become a network of a broader range of crypto projects and these systems will be customized as an alternative to the existing payments system by being a lot less complex to create and cheaper to operate. The project also aims to avoid becoming a central point of failure and will also improve security. The built-in security protocols on the Crypto.com Chain includes the use of trusted execution environments. The main task is the protection of the integrity of the data belonging to the participants in the system. In addition to security, the platform is promoted to offer advanced privacy features with the multi-signature Merkelized Abstract Syntex Trees.

While being open to everyone, the project defined the roles of the different actors that seek to participate with a set of incentives that are market for each group of participants including customers, merchants, acquirers and crypto customer acquirers. The main role of the customers on the Chain is to use the network in order to make payments in the cryptocurrencies. The incentive segment is related to the ability to use the discounts in forms of cashbacks which is funded by the platform. At the same time, the access to cryptocurrencies is provided and the customers can spend them from their wallets directly with a whole range of merchants.

The registration process for customers involves several steps:

• The customer registers on the existing crypto wallet or exchange
• A QR code is scanned at the merchant location
• The customer confirms the payment
• The account is then debited while the merchant account gets credited and the customers are covered by Crypto.com BlockShield Buyer Protection Program.

The merchants’ main role on the chain is to accept the payment in cryptos for the products and services that they provide. In exchange, the settlements in cryptos will come with a 0% processing fees with the option to offer the customers the discount funded by the network. To become a merchant on the Chain is designed to be flexible in terms of the use of cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies. The merchants can use their existing point of sale or simply go for Crypto.com online payment gateway. They can also integrate the provided Crypto.com Pay button so they will instantly receive their payments in the CRO or other stablecoins.

The chain acts as a bridge between the customers and merchants being in charge of managing the payment flows from customers to merchants from the transaction authorization to the final settlement. The chain is also able to distribute the processing fees to the chain and also manages to dispute the resolution procedures.

The customer acquirers are in charge of acquiring and working with the customers and giving them access to the assets. also, to facilitate the Crypto.com network, the acquirers authorize the transaction on the network such as the payment requests related to the interaction between the merchants and the customers’ POS. To become an acquirer on the Crypto.com chain you should:

– Sign a standardized agreement and settlement and dispute resolution.
– Pass the compliance evaluation
– Have a minimum CRO amount locked up
– Pass the acceptance testing

The merchant acquirers, on the other hand, have to acquire the merchants on the network and send transactions for the authorization based on payment requests received from the POS. This includes the direct-to-merchant deals with online merchants using the self-service payment gateway and the offline merchant who accept credit and debit cards.

The project is intended for mobile payments and the architecture enabling them to support several layers tasked with meeting the needs of the different kinds of users.
The council nodes are in charge of managing the transactions validations and the reception of processing fees. They also provide CRO-based rewards and send, order and receive the transactions. The council nodes are compensated for their services on a per-transaction basis. These nodes will keep a whitelist log of council and acquirer settlement agent node identities. Also, the council node runs on a Byzantine Fault Tolerance protocol which determines the final order of transaction sequences.

The acquirer nodes manage the settlement on behalf of the others and provide an escrow service. They verify the related transactions and provide services related to verified merchant name mapping and they are eventually rewarded for their services on a per-transaction amount basis.

The Settlement agent nods are tasked with selling tokens for other currencies and the goal is to provide the merchants a good price conversion option after the settlement. The agents can earn profit by providing conversion services and charging 0.50% rate for the fiat payouts.

The CRO token is an ERC-20 token meant for mobile payments. Despite its complicated architecture, Crypto.com Chain will deliver its vision by creating an innovative technology while leveraging the blockchain technology structural design elements.