The decentralized finance industry has exploded with interest and innovation. There are now more than billions of dollars worth of digital assets held by popular DeFi protocols like Aave, Uniswap, Curve, SushiSwap. But there’s a problem: most of these protocols operate on the Ethereum blockchain, which currently suffers from extreme congestion and high fees, posing major roadblocks to any further adoption, and Aurora is NEAR’s answer to this problem!
What is Aurora?
The Aurora framework consists of the Aurora Engine, a high-performance EVM—the Ethereum Virtual Machine, and the Aurora Bridge, which enables trustless transfer of ETH and ERC-20 tokens between Ethereum and Aurora within an easy-to-use user interface.
Aurora exists and operates as an independent, self-funded initiative but will continue to leverage the DNA of the shared team and the ever-evolving NEAR Protocol technology. Aurora’s governance will be a hybrid form of decentralized autonomous organization – AuroraDAO.
NEAR and Aurora to Accelerate DeFi growth
In Aurora Engine EVM, developers can deploy their code on Aurora with zero changes, allowing them to benefit from NEAR’s speed, security, and scalability while maintaining the original functionality of their applications. Aurora leverages the same underlying technology as NEAR’s Rainbow Bridge to enable seamless Ethereum-to-NEAR asset transfers. For the user, it means a safe, simple, and affordable route into DeFi on Ethereum.
| Note: Aurora platform is built on NEAR and it helps users and the decentralized applications that operate on the Ethereum network bridge to NEAR protocol. |
Users interact with Aurora-based applications just as if they were transacting on Ethereum, and all transactions are paid and denominated in Ethereum. Users can simply open up a familiar wallet interface like MetaMask or MToken to start using the apps on Aurora. Compared to native Ethereum, Aurora features up to a thousand times lower fees, massively increased throughput, and two-second transaction finality, providing a future-proof platform that can scale without limits. With a growing range of popular Ethereum projects set to port to Aurora, it’s just a matter of time until NEAR’s technology powers your favorite applications.
Aurora Also Brings Other Benefits for Developers and Users Too
- Compatibility: Aurora is fully compatible with Ethereum. Transferring to the Near network is literally a couple of mouse clicks away.
- Bandwidth: Aurora runs on the NEAR protocol, one of the highest-performance third-generation L1 protocols.
- Reliability: Rainbow Bridge is the only fully reliable and secure asset bridge in the Ethereum industry.
- Low transactions: Our users can enjoy not only fast, but also very cost-effective transactions (transactions are currently free because Aurora subsidises all network transactions).
- The base currency is ETH: Transaction fees on Aurora are paid in the base currency, ETH, which provides a great user experience and opens up the possibility of developing a sustainable ecosystem.
- Staking: Staking of Aurora tokens is being developed. With NEAR’s Staking 2.0, users can stake NEAR and earn rewards in Aurora.
Conclusion
By understanding all these benefits, we encourage the community to dive in and explore more about the full range of Aurora features. Aurora allows Ethereum’s most popular applications to leverage NEAR’s powerful blockchain protocol. Not only that, even all developers looking to launch on Aurora don’t need to rewrite any code as Aurora is fully compatible with the Ethereum environment. At the same time, the Aurora Bridge, as a part of the NEAR Rainbow Bridge, is widely considered as the best asset bridge within the Ethereum ecosystem.
