Cronos has announced the x402 PayTech Hackathon, a global builder challenge with a $42,000 USD prize pool designed to accelerate innovation in AI-native, on-chain payments. The event invites developers to explore new applications powered by x402 agentic payments, the Crypto.com AI Agent SDK and emerging infrastructure across the Cronos and Crypto.com ecosystem.
The hackathon launches as Cronos advances its broader vision of becoming a high-performance hub for institutional tokenization and AI-driven financial infrastructure. Recent upgrades have reduced gas fees by 10X, increased daily transactions by 400% and shortened block times to under one second, positioning Cronos as one of the most production-ready environments for intelligent on-chain systems.
Builders will have the opportunity to experiment with automated settlement flows, AI-driven wallet actions, RWA integrations, Crypto.com ecosystem interactions and new developer tooling for AI agents. With integration paths across the Cronos and Crypto.com ecosystem, developers can tap into real-world payment and asset infrastructure with the potential to reach millions of users globally.
“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.
Participants will gain access to technical guidance, workshops, office hours and a growing library of developer resources covering Cronos EVM, x402 programmatic payments and the Crypto.com AI Agent SDK. High-potential teams may also be considered for post-hackathon support, including grants, incubation or deeper ecosystem collaboration.
Registration opens today on DoraHacks, with the build period running from early December through late January.
About Cronos Labs
Cronos is a leading blockchain ecosystem, supported by Crypto.com and more than 500 application developers and contributors representing an addressable user base of more than 150 million people around the world. Cronos' mission is to build the DeFi infrastructure that makes tokenized markets open, compliant and usable by billions.
The Cronos universe encompasses 3 chains: Cronos EVM, the leading Ethereum-compatible blockchain built on the Cosmos SDK; Cronos POS, a leading Cosmos chain for payments and NFTs; and Cronos zkEVM, a new high-performance layer 2 network secured by Ethereum.
Cronos ranks among the top 15 blockchain ecosystems, encompassing more than 6 billion dollars of user assets. Since inception, it has securely settled more than 100 million transactions.
Transaction fees are paid in Cronos ($CRO), a blue chip cryptocurrency.
Cronos is supported by Cronos Labs, a Web3 start-up accelerator focused on DeFi, GameFi and the development of the Cronos ecosystem.
Contact Information
Danielle Hrin Kuek
danielle.hrin@cronoslabs.org