INITIAL PROPOSAL: Cronos POS Chain V6 network upgrade

[lezzokafka]

Authors and Credit

Cronos Team: @calvinaco, @thomas-nguy, and @JayT106 for development; @aw126 for drafting this proposal; and the community for their support.

Status

DRAFT

Proposal

We are pleased to announce that the governance proposal for the Cronos POS Chain v6.0.0 mainnet upgrade is now live. This proposal introduces important improvements to the network’s performance, security, and interoperability by incorporating the latest developments from the Cosmos SDK. We encourage all validators, node operators, and community members to review the details and participate in the voting process.

• The tentative date for this upgrade is scheduled for the week of July 21, 2025.

This proposal aims to upgrade the Cronos POS Chain mainnet (chain ID: crypto-org-chain-mainnet-1) to v6.0.0. This release brings the chain in line with the latest Cosmos ecosystem standards and includes key dependency upgrades, the new Circuit Breaker module, and database optimizations to boost efficiency for both developers and users.

What is this upgrade about?

• Core library upgrades
  The upgrade includes the following dependency bumps bringing Cronos up-to-date with the latest standards. Cosmos SDK v0.50.10 builds on the foundational improvements from the “Twilight” release which introduced better event handling, settings management, and support for a more flexible consensus engine to boost performance. v0.50.10 extends these capabilities with improved modularity, runtime stability, and tooling fixes that make maintenance and upgrades easier. Together with the IBC-go v8.5.1, it improves cross-chain communication and compatibility with the wider IBC ecosystem. And CometBFT v0.38.13 provides stability improvements to the consensus layer.

• Circuit Breaker Module
  The v6.0.0 upgrade introduces the x/circuit module, which provides network operators with an emergency mechanism to freeze specific message types. It can be used to respond to potential vulnerabilities without requiring a full chain halt, by allowing an authorized account (such as a validator or governance account) to trip the circuit breaker to temporarily block messages from being executed or included in the mempool.

• RocksDB caching layer
  A caching mechanism has been added to RocksDB to optimize memory usage during block execution. It significantly reduces RAM consumption by limiting in-memory state storage during block execution. As a result, full nodes now use less RAM especially during periods of high activity, making it easier and more cost-effective for validators and node operators to run the network.

• MemIAVL and RocksDB Enhancements
  MemIAVL has been bumped to its latest version with improved state sync performance and consistency. RocksDB is now upgraded to v9.2.1, with VersionDB adjusted for compatibility and optimal read/write performance. These enhancements reduce memory pressure and improve database handling for validators and full nodes during chain operations.

• Other Updates and Fixes
  Beyond the major updates detailed above, this release includes several important compatibility improvements, such as Solo Machine upgraded to v0.1.4, MsgModuleQuerySafe added to allowed message types in ICA host settings, enhanced validation for expedited governance proposals and more.

These updates collectively enhance the reliability and performance of the Cronos POS Chain and reduce infrastructure requirements for validators and node operators.

For more details, users can refer to the full binary release notes.

Testing

Proposed changes have been applied to the Croeseid testnet testnet-croeseid-4 to ensure the expected outcomes are achieved.

Next step

After further discussion and suggestion to this proposal, an on-chain network upgrade governance proposal will be raised, and the following items summarize the voting options and what it means for the proposal:

• YES: You approve the upgrade proposal to continue with the upgrade to v6.0.0
• NO: You disapprove of the proposal in its current form. Feel free to give feedback and suggestions on how to improve the proposal.
• NO (VETO): You veto the entire motivation for the proposal, are strongly opposed to its implementation, and will exit the network if passed. You are signaling the proposers should not create a follow-up proposal.
• ABSTAIN: You are impartial to the outcome of the proposal.

We would love to hear from you! You are welcome to leave comments here in this post.