Aurora Labs

Aurora Labs is a company that has developed an ecosystem for blockchain solutions. It was founded in 2021 with the majority of the team also working on the NEAR Protocol. The main solution that the company has developed is an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), a turnkey solution for developers. It allows them to operate their apps on an Ethereum-compatible, high-throughput, scalable, and future-safe platform, with low transaction costs for their users.

The Aurora environment is composed of various solutions, including Aurora Engine and Rainbow Bridge.

The Aurora Engine is the official EVM of NEAR Protocol. It is powered by SputnikVM and allows developers to deploy their decentralized applications (dApps) with low gas fees. The team behind Aurora states that it recommends for users to interact with the protocol using wallets, such as MetaMask or Hardhat. Dozens of dApps have already been launched, with some related to decentralized finance (DeFi), gaming, and non-fungible tokens.

Aurora has developed a bridge called Rainbow Bridge, and it has been designed to facilitate the trustless transfer of ETH and ERC20 tokens between Ethereum, Aurora, and the NEAR Protocol. There have been several versions of this bridge, with the first being called Aurora Bridge. The name was changed to Rainbow Bridge in the second version, and as of May 2023, Rainbow Bridge 2.0 is available to users.

The Aurora token, AURORA, was released on Ethereum and is the governance token of the project. The token was first launched on October 7, 2021, with a total supply of one billion.

The token allocation is broken down as follows:

• 20% (200 million) – Community Treasury
• 16% (160 million) – Aurora Labs long-term incentives. Tokens are subjected to a vesting scheme determined by Aurora Labs.
• 9% (90 million) – Aurora Labs private round investors. These tokens are subjected to the unlocking scheme.

• 3% (30 million) – Allocated to Aurora validator delegators.
• 2% (20 million) – Early AURORA contributors. Allocations should be provided by NEAR Foundation. These tokens should be subjected to the unlocking scheme. NEAR Foundation may implement a vesting scheme for these tokens.
• 1% (10 million) – Allocated to Aurora Labs to be used as incentives for project advisors
• 1% (10 million) – Allocated for bootstrapping the AURORA ecosystem.
• 3% (30 million) – Allocated for Aurora Labs growth round
• 2.6% (26 million) – Allocated for ongoing grant programs
• 1.8 % (18 million) – Allocated for ongoing projects
• 40.6% (406 million) – Kept on the DAO balance for future projects

Token allocation

Aurora is governed by the Aurora decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). High-level seats for the council of this DAO are held by people from Aurora Labs, investors, and ecosystem partners. Holders of AURORA will periodically be able to vote on the council and who holds seats.

Other solutions that have been developed by Aurora include Aurora Cloud, Aurora Doves (NFTS), and Aurora+, an elevated version of Aurora that gives rewards to members.

Introduction to Aurora Cloud