A brief insight into the ecosystem & a guide to claim 50 FREE transaction

I am not a financial advisor, and nothing I say in this substack is financial advice.

This is all educational content you can use as a starting off point for your own research initiatives. I’m just another random individual who started a substack ‘cause I think/hope/know… that I have something to share with you all’. 🤷

That said, if you’d like to know a bit about me and are wondering why you should listen to me, read this intro post I wrote🙌

1. What is Aurora,

2. What is NEAR protocol,

3. What is Aurora plus & how to claim 50 free transactions, and

4. Lastly, how to bridge, explore the ecosystem, and stake Aurora.

At first glance, Aurora might seem like any other EVM chain out there. There’s quite a few of those floating around today such as BNB Chain, AVAX C-Chain, EVMOS, MoonBeam.

So, what makes Aurora different? It’s actually an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) implemented as a smart contract on NEAR Protocol. NEAR is a modern layer-1 blockchain which is fast (2-3 second transaction finalization), scalable, and carbon neutral.

Developers enjoy familiar Ethereum tooling (MetaMask, Truffle, Hardhat, Remix, etc.), allowing all Ethereum native applications to port over seamlessly.

Additionally, NEAR's trustless bridge to Ethereum means even the assets on Aurora are the same as Ethereum. For example, account balances in Aurora's EVM are also denominated in Ether (ETH), just like Ethereum.

Most EVM chains today, including the ones mentioned above use their chains native token/coin as their GAS token (a.k.a what users have to use to pay for transactions to perform any economic activity.)

As the base fee on Aurora can be paid with ETH, it provides an even smoother experience for dapps’ users. Users can simply bridge their ETH and start exploring the ecosystem right away!

They don’t have to worry about swapping their ETH to the platforms native token or hunt down faucets, or harass the community on discord for some drip which may expose your address unnecessarily in some cases.

Below is an info-graphic taken from the Aurora Docs to give you a visual representation of everything that’s taking place.

🤞Here’s how it works:

First the user sends a signed Ethereum tx to the RPC (Remote Procedural Call). Then the RPC wraps the said Ethereum tx into a NEAR tx and sends the wrapped tx to NEAR Protocol.

Once received, NEAR Protocol then unwraps and calculates NEAR Gas usage and sends the signed Ethereum tx as a parameter of the Aurora Contract Call to the Aurora Engine.

The Aurora Engine then calculates the EVM gas and executes the Ethereum tx.

This all happens in mere seconds!

In addition to the EVM, Aurora developed the Rainbow Bridge which allows users to transfer assets between Ethereum, NEAR, and Aurora with more on the way.

The features of the NEAR Protocol, such as delegated Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism and dynamic resharding (Nightshade), allow faster transaction speeds and scalability in a fully Ethereum-compatible environment.

Aurora is also backed by top VCs such as Pantera Capital, Electric Capital, Dragonfly Capital, and Alameda Research.

It was also formerly backed by Three Arrows Capital (R.I.P). Guess we can’t all be perfect. But I forgive you. In hindsight, the writings were on the wall and we all should’ve been more careful. Best we can do now is keep building!

NEAR is a user-friendly and carbon-neutral blockchain, built to be performant, secure, and infinitely scalable.

NEAR is the native token of the NEAR blockchain. Here are the three primary use-cases:

1. Transaction fees: All transactions which occur on the NEAR blockchain require NEAR token. Due to the proof-of-stake (PoS) and scalable nature of the chain, these transaction fees are often very low.

2. Staking: NEAR can be delegated to validators (staked) to earn NEAR rewards.

3. Acquiring a validator seat: To become a validator on the NEAR blockchain a minimum amount of NEAR is required; at the time of writing this issue, it’s 270,326 NEAR ($1,008,315.98). However, this amount changes often. Please see the Explorer for the current seat price to become a Block Producer.

In technical terms, NEAR is a layer one, sharded, proof-of-stake blockchain built with usability in mind.

In simple terms, NEAR is a blockchain for everyone.

This means it’s not dependent on other chains. It uses a unique scaling mechanism (Nightshade sharding) and makes it easy to onboard new users (e.g. through named accounts).

Each account created in the NEAR Wallet ends with .near. 

For example:  Choosing the username satoshi will make your account address satoshi.near.

And your friends can find you by just typing satoshi.near.

Making that your identity on the NEAR blockchain. 

This gives NEAR huge plus points and a pat on the back for usability and accessibility. Sure, on Ethereum you can buy an ENS domain today and register your addresses to your ENS domain, just like I have registered my wallet address to shitcoinornot.eth (ENS Domain).

A key difference, however, is that users have to pay for those ENS domains on an ongoing basis and manage them accordingly.

With NEAR, there’s no long-string addresses. It’s just username.near by default.

I urge you to read up on creating a NEAR wallet and perhaps take the leap and create one. But, I’ll leave that decision up to you! Again, not financial advice, just a individual experimenting and documenting.

The NEAR protocol serves as the secure, scalable foundation for all kinds of decentralized applications (dApps). It’s built to be easy for developers to use (e.g. by coding in JavaScript). Hundreds of projects are already building exciting dApps on NEAR.

If all this Layer 1 vs Layer 2 nonsense is confusing you, folks at NEAR have this simple illustration on their website that tries to explain what it all means.

Essentially, think of the NEAR blockchain as the core/base foundational layer, upon which you build key infrastructure like Aurora, which makes all the primitive functions easily accessible to builders so they can build dApps and deploy smart contracts like AAVE, 1inch, Sushiswap, etc.

These dApps can be called L3s as they are usually built and deployed on top of an L2 such as Aurora with existing infrastructure.

And then users like me and you can access these apps and perform actions like borrow, lend, swap, etc. via a front-end/website with UIs (User Interfaces) dubbed Layer 4 or L4s in the example illustrated in the image above.

So, to recap: Layer 1 (L1) is a blockchain, Layer 2 (L2) (in this case) is a smart-contract deployed on top of the blockchain, Layer 3 (L3) is a dApp that leverages the security, services and tooling of the L1 and L2 to provide a unique service**.** A Layer 4 (L4) is a Mobile App, Website, or any UI that you as a user are using to interact with the said dApp (L3).

🌐🔗 Learn About Near

If you don’t quite understand what all this Web3 nonsense is, I urge you to checkout NEAR’s learn page. They’ve done a great job simplifying what NEAR is what a blockchain is, in plain and simple language.

There will definitely be more in-depth dedicated reviews for Aurora and NEAR. I won’t go into extensive details about these projects as that’s beyond the scope of this S#!T POST. I assure you, it’s in the not so distant future.

So be sure to visit this S#!tCoinoor often!

If you like the content and wish to be notified on new research and updates. Feel free to subscribe. I don’t spam.

Now let’s get back to Aurora+

In simple terms, Aurora+ is a membership/subscription type of program for Aurora users. It provides a suite of valuable benefits such as free transactions and the ability to earn multiple rewards by staking your AURORA tokens.

As of now, all Aurora users can sign up for a free basic account, which includes:

1. 50 free transactions per month: A primary pain-point for users in the cryptocurrency space is awareness, understanding, and dealing with transaction fees.

2. AURORA staking: Aurora+ members who stake AURORA tokens will get a continuous stream of AURORA rewards, alongside streams of rewards from the best projects throughout the Aurora ecosystem!

3. AURORA Airdrop (Sadly, we missed this 😔): Folks who created an Aurora+ account and staked their Aurora tokens during the first week of launch received an Aurora Airdrop. I believe it was just a single Aurora token (Approx. $1.20 as of today) Which was staked to your account by default, Most folks said it arrived approx 24 hours after sign-up. Don’t quote me on that but, point being, it was not a big chunk, so luckily we didn’t miss a big pay-day!

Those benefits listed above are just the benefits available today. The Aurora team seems committed on continuous evolution of the Aurora+ platform with features like:

1. Paid Premium Plans: Perhaps you need more than 50 transactions per month? (An Average user will use them and run out of free transactions within a week, A Heavy/Power User will exhaust that within a day). Perhaps you're a trader and need your transactions prioritized? (Want to jump the que?) Just like a cellular plan, Aurora+ Premium Plans will allow users to access the features and services that exactly fit their needs.

2. Governance participation: Aurora+ members who stake AURORA will be eligible to participate in the governance of the Aurora protocol and will be able to become members of the AuroraDAO.

3. Private transactions: Given the technical underpinnings between Aurora and the NEAR protocol, Aurora+ will roll out a solution to the Ethereum Dark Forest problems related to transaction analysis and front-running.

4. Single-point KYC: Aurora+ will offer optional KYC from within the user’s dashboard, recording the results to the blockchain and making them available to any dApps in the Aurora ecosystem that require KYCs.

🧧🔗 Here’s the link you can use to sign-up and claim your 50 Free transactions

Aurora is working to optimize the experience not only for its users but for its ecosystem apps and platforms as well. I must say, they have amazing UX (User Experience) and DX (Developer Experience); something not enough builders/projects in this industry focus on for some reason.

I’ve linked the official release video below. Be sure to check that out to better understand a bit more about Aurora. (Don’t just let some random person like me shill the project to you.) If at all possible, please do spare the 19 or so minutes to watch it and gauge the project, the mission, vision, and the founders for yourself.

I find the presentation very apple-esque! Perhaps you will too. If nothing, I’m certain it’ll keep you engaged to some capacity. Regardless, I love the initiative; they seem to have a great team building a great project. But, that is just my opinion! Let me know in the comments below if you agree or not :)

📊🔗 Aurora+

If you haven’t already signed-up, here’s an invite.

To complete the sign-up process, you’ll need an email (I use Skiff Mail so my Metamask wallet can become the key to my email account) and a wallet (I use Metamask cause I find it the easiest to use atm).

Once you add your email address and click “claim free account” your Metamask will prompt you to sign a simple message. Go ahead and sign that. This will send the email address you provided a magic link to confirm your email and sign into your aurora.plus dashboard.

When you click the link in your email, it will take you to the Aurora+ dashboard and ask you to connect you wallet with the Aurora+ account.

Once you click on “link this address” your Metamask will prompt you to sign another simple message. I’ve dropped a screenshot showing you what the message looked like for me. Once you sign the message you’ll be taken to the Aurora+ dashboard.

Once you complete the steps shown above, you’ll be guided by the interface to setup your unique Aurora+ RPC which is essentially just a custom network that will be added to your Metamask (Note: do not share your RPC details with anyone!).

Once all of the above is completed successfully, you’ll be taken to your account dashboard and that should look similar to the screen-cap provided below (My Aurora+ dashboard).

As you can see the dashboard is quite self explanatory and intuitive. I’ll you explore a bit on your own, (if you’ve been following along).

If you don’t have any AURORA tokens, you can use their FIAT on-ramp to buy with a Visa or MasterCard. Or, perhaps you can bridge it over using the rainbow bridge.

🌉🔗 Rainbow Bridge

The Rainbow Bridge is the official bridge for transferring tokens between Ethereum, NEAR, and the Aurora networks. The bridge is the product of Aurora, the Ethereum-compatible scaling solution built on NEAR.

You can use the bridge to move tokens between any of the three networks. Depending on the selected direction, bridging can involve one or two transactions. Transfers to NEAR & Aurora require a single transaction and take up to 10 minutes. Transfers from Ethereum mainnet require two transactions, and can take a few hours. To learn more, check out their FAQs.

🔃🔗 Swap Tokens

You can also swap tokens within the dashboard by selecting the Swap card on your dashboard’s home page or by accessing it form the top navbar (it’s located between swap and bridge buttons). All in all, they’ve really done a great job of providing all the key primitives to you in a single place to cover all the basic needs of a user.

🥩🔗 Stake Aurora

Once you have the tokens, all you have to do is hit the stake button and select how much you want to stake. And just like that, you’ll start earning the Ecosystem streams!

As you can see in the screen-cap below I’ve managed to earn some votes and tokens for Bastion (Stableswap), Trisolaris (DEX), Aurigami (Money-Market/Lending-borrowing), etc. I’ll let you explore your dashboard and figure the rest on your own.

🗺️🔗 Discover the Ecosystem

All that’s left to do now is explore the aurora ecosystem and dig in! There’s DAOs, Defi Protocols, NFT platforms, etc. Visit https://aurora.dev/ecosystem to start browsing projects and experimenting on your own.

🕵️ Aurora Staking and the Community Treasury

If you are interested in figuring out how staking works, the purpose behind it, how rewards are handled, and what’s the discussion around all of this, I recommend you check out the linked discussion forum to gain more insight.

That’s it for this one folks! Of course, it goes without saying but bears repeating that nothing I say or share here is financial advice. I’m just another random individual starting a substack ‘cause I think I have something to share with you all’. 🤷

Also, like many individuals who are doing this for a living I also am a humble penniless fool. So, if you are a kind, bountiful, and gifted individual who has benefited from this S#!t Postery and wish to buy this S#!t Poster of yours a coffee, Some drip money would definitely be appreciated and will help to keep my fingers going on this mechanical keyboard of mine.

You can donate whatever you think is right at this address: shitcoinornot.eth :)

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