Aurora Engineering Recap May 2024

Read about Aurora's May 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!

Product Updates

The product team has been very busy developing key tool for the Aurora Cloud Stack, worked on Aurora Pass 2.0, and a few other user facing projects:

Web3Wallet Contracts and UI: Currently in the testing phase, this product will enable users to use their EVM wallets, such as Metamask, on NEAR. The primary goal is to resolve compatibility issues between Ethereum and NEAR standards, ensuring a seamless user experience on the NEAR platform. More info here.
Aurora Chain Oracle Contracts Developed: These contracts will enable the use of Pyth price feeds on the Aurora Chain, with a planned release in June.
Aurora Cloud Bridge Development: This single widget will connect all Aurora Chains with NEAR and Ethereum, unifying on-ramps and the Rainbow Bridge, and simplifying user onboarding. Documentation and integration tutorials for developers will be released soon, with a planned release in June.
AuroraPass Bug Fixes and Improvements: AuroraPass 2.0 is in progress and is expected to be released around the end of June. Additionally, a bug causing Aurora Pass magic link emails to be classified as "spam" for some users was fixed.
MetaMask Deprecation Message Issue Resolved: The confusion between Infura RPC and Goerli Network deprecations has been addressed. The correct message, "The Infura RPC URL is no longer supporting Aurora," will now be displayed, and the mainnet RPC endpoint will be updated automatically. Read more about it here.

Infrastructure Updates

May saw significant progress in enhancing Aurora's infrastructure:

Private Infrastructure Automation: Monitoring and testing processes were improved, ensuring a more robust and reliable system.
Forwarder Enhancements: A new retry algorithm handles congestion on the NEAR side, improving transaction reliability. The classification of transfers in the indexer database was also refined.
Web3 Wallet Project: The project is in the testing phase, with implicit address support PR submitted to Nearcore, aiming to streamline user interactions and wallet management.
HereWallet Team Support: Provided essential MPC infrastructure for upcoming releases, enhancing security and functionality.
Debugging Standalone-RPC: Syncing issues were addressed and resolved, ensuring smooth operations for developers.
Aurora Explorer Updates: The database was reindexed, and outdated API endpoints were removed, improving performance and user experience.
NEAR RPC Speed-up Project: Developed and tested new speed-up algorithms, preparing for real-world implementation to enhance network responsiveness.

Research Initiatives Updates

The research team focused on stateless validation support for NEAR. Stateless validation allows validators to store only parts of the state, significantly reducing computational and storage requirements. This innovation lowers the barriers to becoming a validator, enhancing network decentralization and robustness. Watch this video to learn more about it and its potential impact on the NEAR ecosystem.

Security Updates

NEAR CLI Extension for Multisigs: Developed to support Burrow.finance, this extension simplifies multisig transactions, improving security and usability.
Support for Pipeflare Team: Assisted with bridging initiatives, facilitating seamless integration and interoperability across platforms.

Engine Updates

The engine team made substantial advancements in May:

Cancun Release of Aurora Engine: Focused on improving test coverage for the upcoming Cancun release. This update aims to enhance the reliability and functionality of the Aurora Engine. Read more about Cancun here.
ETH-Connector Split: Prepared for Testnet deployment in May, this change abstracts NEP-141 functionality from the Engine contract to a separate contract. This modular approach allows greater flexibility and reuse across different Aurora Chains on NEAR.
Forwarder Factory Contract Improvements: Replaced Full-Access Keys with Function Call Access Keys, enhancing security and usability. This change allows users to interact with specific functions of a smart contract without exposing their entire account.
Lake Indexer Addition: Planned to add the Lake Indexer to Aurora's private infrastructure as a backup, ensuring data redundancy and reliability.

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About Aurora

Powered by its high-performance EVM, and fully trustless Rainbow Bridge, Aurora combines an Ethereum compatible experience with the modern blockchain performance of NEAR Protocol. Aurora provides an optimal environment for the creation of scalable, carbon-neutral, future-safe, and low-cost Web3 services, as well as the perfect tools to bring to life your Web3 initiatives. Aurora’s flagship virtual blockchain solution Aurora Cloud, is designed from the ground up for businesses looking to seamlessly leverage Blockchain technology to provide a web2 experience on chain.