Aurora Engineering Recap August 2024

Read about Aurora's August 2024 engineering progress, featuring key infrastructure updates, research advancements, security improvements, and product updates.

These updates and improvements are part of our continuous effort to enhance the Aurora ecosystem, making it more efficient, secure, and user-friendly. Stay tuned for more exciting developments in the coming months!

Apps Team Updates

Aurora Pass V2: Internal testing version is available. We are also working on improving the transaction history by incorporating more data from the Explorer and NEAR transactions.
Aurora Cloud Console: New designs and sign-up flow are in progress, along with competitor research.
Aurora+ Cloud Bridge: Development of the cloud bridge is ongoing.
Rainbow Bridge: Added automatic conversion of stables to their wrapped analogs (e.g., USDT -> USDT.e) when bridging to Ethereum.

Product Updates

Aurora Cloud Client: Onboarded a new client for Aurora Cloud and entered the active development phase.
Developer Onboarding: Released Dev Onboarding documentation for Aurora. Working on enhancing the structure of the documentation, with plans to merge the DevPortal and Docs.
Aurora Cloud Console: Deployed a Devnet for the Aurora Cloud Console. Offramp Services: Munzen will provide offramp services for the Virtual Chains. Forwarder SDK: Development is ongoing. Case Study: The TPRO (Tokenomia's Virtual Chain) case study has been published on the Aurora Cloud website.

Engine Updates

Rust Mempool: The team is working on a Proof of Concept (PoC) for Aurora's internal infrastructure.
Prague Hardfork: Support is in progress, along with EVM improvements (EIP-7702 support).
Aurora Engine 3.6.4: Deployed on Mainnet, improving the network's efficiency.
Aurora CLI: Extended with new types of transactions for the Engine.
Upgrade Flow: The new upgrade flow of the Aurora Engine has been tested on testnet. Mainnet release is planned for September.
ETH Connector Split: The separation of NEP-141 functions from the Aurora contract is complete, with a Mainnet release planned for September.

Infrastructure Updates

BlocksAPI: Development of the BlocksAPI tool for Chainstack is in progress, offering an alternative to Aurora RPC indexers, with potential integration into the relayer2-public repo in the future.
Debugging: Issues with standalone-rpc were addressed, and deployment scripts were updated. The snapshot downloading process was improved by switching from curl to rsync. Reindexing: Completed reindexing on mainnet and Blockscout. Fresh snapshots were prepared for the RPCs.
RPC Speed Up Project: New tests were written, and more metrics were collected. The final report was prepared for NEAR, showing promising results in reducing block timestamp delays from 300ms to 100ms. A tech article is planned for next month.
ETHWallet Project: Wallet Testing: Ongoing testing and bug fixes for wallet contract updates. Issues with Rabby and Zerion wallets were fixed. Metrics and Monitoring: Server setup for project metrics and monitoring was completed. Migration: The transition from Badger to Redis is underway, offering better scalability.

Research Initiatives Updates

*** ETH Implicit Accounts:** ETH Implicit accounts protocol changes are now live on NEAR Mainnet. Some issues have been resolved, and the NEP rewrite has been finalized.

RPC Speedup: Continued debugging and analysis of results, in collaboration with the Infrastructure team. The final report has been completed.
Aurora Engine Review: Recent changes to the Aurora Engine and Aurora EVM have been reviewed.

Security Team Updates

Bug Bounties: Two reports were addressed this month.
ETHWallet Development: Continued support for the ETHWallet development process.

About Aurora

Aurora is a network of Virtual Chains that combines NEAR’s scalability with powerful infrastructure for the easy deployment of preconfigured blockchains. By integrating a high-performance EVM, the trustless Rainbow Bridge, and advanced Cross Contract Call technology, Aurora goes beyond full Ethereum compatibility, opening the doors to a multichain world.