Aurora, an Ethereum-based layer-2 solution that provides developers and users the experience of Ethereum on top of NEAR Protocol, a scalable blockchain-based developer platform, has officially launched. Aurora combines two pieces of technology to create a seamless experience: a full-featured Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and a powerful cross-chain bridge.
Ethereum transaction fees have reached record highs due to increasing network activity…
To bypass these growing costs, Aurora caps gas fees to ensure they do not infinitely increase, maintaining an average transaction cost of a few cents. Aurora manages to lower costs while radically speeding up transactions, which achieve finality within two seconds.
The Aurora solution lets developers deploy existing Solidity and Vyper contracts with no changes, while users can seamlessly access these applications using MetaMask and other Ethereum wallets. At the same time, ERC-20 tokens and contract data will be transferable from Ethereum to Aurora through the trustless Aurora bridge (based on the Rainbow Bridge).
“With Aurora, Ethereum users can work with familiar applications while benefiting from the efficiency of NEAR, removing a steep financial barrier to entry for users and developers. Our goal is to create an interoperable future where the gaps between blockchains, developers and users are bridged. Aurora does just that by allowing for a seamless user experience and allowing for assets to pass uninterrupted between the Ethereum and NEAR blockchains.”
– Illia Polosukhin, Co-founder of NEAR Protocol
Aurora is fully compatible with Ethereum 1.0; including base fees paid in ETH and operable right out-of-the-box with all existing wallets and other tools. To start using Aurora, check out aurora.dev.
