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What is Aurora?

Aurora is an EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) compatible blockchain and ecosystem, running as a decentralised layer 2 on the NEAR Protocol. It powers innovations such as Aurora Cloud, the infrastructure solution to onboard web2 businesses onto web3.

Aurora is an EVM implemented as a smart contract on NEAR Protocol which provides several advantages:

  • Aurora is fully compatible with Ethereum. Applications can be seamlessly deployed on Aurora without the need to re-write smart contracts. All you need is to change the RPC endpoint you interact with.
  • Aurora runs on the NEAR Protocol, one of the highest-performance third-generation L1 protocols.
  • Transaction fees in Aurora are paid in the base currency, ETH, and are constant (gas price is 0.07 GWei).
  • Aurora supports all the Ethereum ecosystem tools — MetaMask, Foundry, Truffle, Hardhat, Remix, etc.
  • Aurora has protocol level meta transactions, which enables features such as gasless transactions for end users.

Different Development Paths​

As a developer, user can choose between two different ways to build on Aurora:

  • Build on Aurora mainnet: The fastest way to deploy your Ethereum-based dapp with the low fees and high performance of the NEAR Protocol.

  • Deploy a Virtual Chain: Create your own blockchain in minutes with customizable gas, permissions, and ecosystem integrations.

Rainbow Bridge​

As a part of Aurora and NEAR ecosystem, the Rainbow Bridge is a trustless, permissionless protocol for connecting blockchains. The bridge protocol removes the need to trust anyone except the security of the connected chains. Anyone can deploy a new bridge, use an existing bridge, or join the maintenance of an existing bridge without getting approval from anyone else.

The Rainbow Bridge allows any information that is cryptographically provable on Near and Aurora to be usable in Ethereum contracts and vice versa — including the ability to read the state and schedule calls with callbacks on the other chain.

Rainbow Bridge dApp allows also to:

  • Browse your transfers history.
  • Restore your transfers by a hash and see the detailed information, in the case you’re using another browser or device.
  • Deploy the new tokens for bridging if you’re an ecosystem project or developer.
  • Discover if token is already supported by it via Deploy page

Learn More​

To learn more about Aurora, you can check out the official documentation at doc.aurora.dev.