Cronos Lizards is one of the first blue-chip projects on the Cronos blockchain to return 100% of royalties to its holders.
Apollo Launchpad has built and managed their entire tech stack from its conception in October 2021 to its complete mint-out of 3000 NFTs at 299 CRO each in March of 2022.
We strategically chose to develop this project on the Cronos blockchain, as it was a relatively new blockchain that was released last November. From researching previous highly successful NFT projects on more mature blockchains such as Solana, we found that there were significant blue ocean advantages for projects developed with a strong foundation and deployed relatively early on newly released blockchains.
While this was a major part of our strategy, the newness of Cronos made it difficult to develop for due to its partially inadequate official documentation and support resources. For example, the official testnet (tCRO) was unusable for a substantial part of our development, which was one of the first major roadblocks we had to overcome.
To make sure we still got our early bird advantage, we also were tasked with completing the technical development from start to finish within two months.
Our Process |
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| 1 |
Identify a feasible testnet (test network) for developmentA testnet is crucial for the development of any decentralized application (dApp), as it allows developers to simulate all transactions with a free, valueless version of the currency of interest. For example, tCRO is a testnet for Cronos. However, due to how new Cronos was at the time of developing Cronos Lizards, tCRO was not fully functional and available. Fortunately, by researching more mature blockchains and the full extent of EVM-compatibility, we overcame this problem by identifying Ropsten, a testnet for Ethereum, to be a feasible alternative for tCRO. We learned that as an EVM-compatible chain, Cronos, unlike its predecessor Crypto.org Chain, could be developed for virtually in the same way for Ethereum and other EVM-compatible chains using Solidity smart contract execution. |
| 2 |
Then, Choose the Right TechnologyCronos being an EVM-compatible chain meant that we would be writing our smart contracts in Solidity. However, we still had to choose a technology for the users to interface directly with our dApps. Since we were already familiar with Alchemy's blockchain APIs that made it easy for our dApps to interact with the blockchain, we chose to build our dApps on NextJS. NextJS not only was highly compatible with Alchemy's APIs, but also was great for creating dynamic web applications and optimizing for SEO with its server-side rendering. |
| 3 |
Iterate and Leave Time to PerfectDespite our hectic schedule, our experience with rapid development left us with some time to perfect the end product with direct input from the very developers of Cronos themselves on their official Discord server. We even had time to build our own native NFT viewers for the Cronos Lizards, which made it easier for holders of the NFTs to view their NFTs. |
We delivered both ahead of schedule and within budget despite only having 3 months to build a brand new concept from scratch - from design to product launch.
After the product launch, we actively supported various promotional activities with our technical expertise and helped lead the collection of 3000 Cronos Lizards NFTs to mint-out in less than 3 months.