Cronos Network Targets October 22 for v1.8 Mainnet Upgrade

Cronos announced the v1.8 network upgrade, scheduled for testnet on September 30 and mainnet on October 22, 2026. The update aims to reduce median block times by approximately 20% and improve throughput by up to 66% through an application-side mempool. Key technical changes include migrating to libp2p for node communication, integrating the Native Block-STM engine for parallel execution, and enhancing Ethereum API compatibility to over 90%.