  This paper reports on the development of a technology involving
$^{100}$Mo-enriched scintillating bolometers, compatible with the goals of
CUPID, a proposed next-generation bolometric experiment to search for
neutrinoless double-beta decay. Large mass ($\sim$1~kg), high optical quality,
radiopure $^{100}$Mo-containing zinc and lithium molybdate crystals have been
produced and used to develop high performance single detector modules based on
0.2--0.4~kg scintillating bolometers. In particular, the energy resolution of
the lithium molybdate detectors near the $Q$-value of the double-beta
transition of $^{100}$Mo (3034~keV) is 4--6~keV FWHM. The rejection of the
$\alpha$-induced dominant background above 2.6~MeV is better than 8$\sigma$.
Less than 10~$\mu$Bq/kg activity of $^{232}$Th ($^{228}$Th) and $^{226}$Ra in
the crystals is ensured by boule recrystallization. The potential of
$^{100}$Mo-enriched scintillating bolometers to perform high sensitivity
double-beta decay searches has been demonstrated with only 10~kg$\times$d
exposure: the two neutrino double-beta decay half-life of $^{100}$Mo has been
measured with the up-to-date highest accuracy as $T_{1/2}$ = [6.90 $\pm$
0.15(stat.) $\pm$ 0.37(syst.)] $\times$ 10$^{18}$~yr. Both crystallization and
detector technologies favor lithium molybdate, which has been selected for the
ongoing construction of the CUPID-0/Mo demonstrator, containing several kg of
$^{100}$Mo.
