In this article we are going to learn what Aurora is? How it ties in with the Near Protocol? And why you should care about it, if you want to make money?
First of all let's go over a quick overview of what the Near Protocol is?
Now Near is a network that's been in the work for a few years. Near uses a delegated proof of stake mechanism to verify new transactions. Along with this method the developers termed a new idea they called Doom Slug as a fast way to confirm these transactions with super quick finality, and also a sharding mechanism that can process upto one hundred thousand transactions per second.
One of my favourite things about the Near Protocol is their DAO like setup where they have guilds or group of people who work on specific aspects of the Near Protocol. Meaning that the community can easily contribute if they want to, also Near announced a $800M incentive for users which is going to be huge new la whenever it launches and more DeFi applications start to move over.
Since Near is built from the ground up, developers have to start all over when designing applications. Although they have a solution for this. And the solution is pretty simple, and it's to create a subnet that can run Ethereum applications on something called an EVM. They called this a subnetwork Aurora.
So now that we have that out of the way. Let's get into..
What an EVM is?
This is important because it is essentially what Aurora is. EVM stands for Ethereum Virtual Machine and to put it simply, it's literally the same code that runs Ethereum and its smart contracts. Many other projects out there have actually copied this code changed it a bit and then call it their own blockchain.
For example,
This is exactly what the Binance Smart Chain Xdai and Polygon Network have done. Aurora is doing something similar as well, and you may be wondering why?
The big reason is that developers don't want to create projects for up-and-coming blockchains. They want to develop something for a big well known blockchain.
The trick is that whenever you create a decentralized application for any EVM blockchain you can easily move your code over to another network. To give you an example for this,
Aave is a decentralized application on Ethereum while Geist is almost the exact same dapp on the Fantom network, and cream is pretty much the same dapp on the Binance Smart Chain.
So the first way that Aurora is different is that it chooses to use Ethereum as it's native coin. The Polygon Network uses Matic, the Binance Smart Chain uses BNB and the Fantom Network uses FTM. This way they have their own coins with different tokenomics to support their network.
Aurora knows that they do not need a coin and Even chose not to use the Near coin which was a big move.
Moving on, let's get into the specific numbers of Aurora.
Aurora TPS/ Blockchain/ Consensus Mechanism
The average block time is around 1.03sec and the finality is two seconds which is very fast. The typical transaction cost is penny or less and using the Near Consensus Mechanism they can process hundreds of transactions per second very easily.
Oh, by the way Aurora is not its own blockchain. It is literally just a smart contracts on the Near Protocol. This means it inherits it's block time and consensus mechanism from the Near network. Which is amazing, and I have never seen any other network attempt to achieve something like this.
To put it simply the layer 2 scaling solution is literally just a smart contracts on the main chain. Along with this in contrast to many other side chains aurora does not validate blocks off chain. All the validation happens on the actual Ethereum and the Near blockchain for security.
This means that all the users need to trust is the Ethereum and Near blockchain's consensus mechanism which makes Aurora and its bridge fully trustless and decentralized.
Aurora actually works on the top of the Near Protocol but it provides a familiar experience of Ethereum for the developers. Basically developers are able to take their solidity contracts that they wrote for Ethereum deploy them on Aurora and then enjoy the low cost and fast confirmation times of Near.
The fact that Aurora is a smart contract is a huge plus for the team that develops Aurora. They don't need to take care of consensus or validators or storage or keep track of a network. It means that they can iterate quickly and deploy new features insanely fast.
Moving on, let's talk about the..
Aurora DAO
Essentially a DAO ( Decentralized Autonomous Organization ) is an organization where the decisions are made up by token holders, and not elected Ceo's or family members who are grandfathered into a corporate position.
Token holders can propose and vote on new ideas or changes and that's the main way that Aurora will actually grow and improve. If you own or hold the Aurora tokens you will be able to participate in this decentralized governing process.
The best benefit of a DAO is that the surrounding community and actual investors are who gets to decide on the big changes. So you know that they will have pure intentions of making the Aurora network the best it can be in a long term time frame.
Another thing I want to talk about is..
The Rainbow Bridge
Now we all know that one of the largest problem in cryptocurrency is Interoperability or the ability to connect a bunch of blockchains.
Aurora has its own Rainbow bridge which is what they are calling the tool that you can use to transfer your tokens to and from the Aurora and Near networks. This means you can easily move your funds from the Ethereum blockchain to the Near blockchain or Aurora whenever you want without trusting a third party because the transfer is all done with codes.
Final Thought
To add my own thoughts I just want to say that you should definitely try new things on the Aurora network, and seeing what comes out of it long term.