Aurora Engineering Updates April 25

EVM Team

Aurora Engine 3.9.0 was released, featuring a major upgrade to the ETH Connector. The ETH token has now been migrated to the eth.bridge.near contract, replacing the older aurora contract. As of NEAR block 143772514, you should now use eth.bridge.near to check ETH balances directly. You can still use the aurora contract as a proxy, but doing so will now incur gas costs.

Omnibridge migration brings more powerful interactions: the exitToNear precompile now supports ft_transfer_call. This means tokens can now be deposited into NEAR Intents, transferred across virtual chains, or bridged to other ecosystems — a big step up from the previous ft_transfer-only method.

Aurora CLI has been modularized into two Rust crates — a CLI and an SDK — via a Cargo workspace restructure. Developers can now integrate the Aurora SDK into their own Rust projects, enabling direct calls to Aurora or any virtual chain.

Infrastructure Team

Across the infrastructure stack, we’ve enhanced testing for Aurora Cloud’s internal components. These new tests ensure consistent performance for every virtual chain — covering integrations like Blockscout and gas plans, as well as internals like the mempool and refiner.

We also rolled out support for EIP-1559 transactions across all virtual chains, bringing improved fee predictability.

We addressed a compatibility issue triggered by a MetaMask update. The change affected onboarding transactions from external wallets. Our fix involved adapting how transaction fields are used, restoring seamless functionality.

Near Intents Team

The addition of nBTC marks a milestone: users can now deposit native Bitcoin (via NEAR) into Intents. Built in partnership with Satoshi Protocol, this implementation leverages chain signatures and a Bitcoin Light Client, making nBTC the most Bitcoin-native asset on NEAR today.

Passive deposits are now live on NEAR — users can now generate a QR code from the Deposit page for a streamlined deposit experience.

We’ve added several new virtual chains this month: TuxaChain, Vertex, Optima, CoinEasy, with more expected soon.

Apps Team

This month, we unlocked more flexibility for virtual chains: USDC, USDT, and BTC (and any token with non-standard decimals) can now be used as base tokens.

Gas collection via UI is now possible — virtual chain admins can now collect gas fees directly to their wallets from the ACC Dashboard.

A new soft delete policy is in place: inactive virtual chains will be automatically removed after 2 weeks, freeing up resources for new deployments.

Trisolaris and Intents integrations can now be requested straight from the ACC Dashboard UI.

We’ve upgraded the Virtual Chain Bridge widget: chain-to-chain bridging bugs resolved, setup is simpler, and more tokens are available. You can test these improvements on the Bridge tab of your virtual chain configuration page.

Wrapping Up

April’s updates show a clear trend: more modularity, more control for devs, and greater connectivity between chains. Whether you're building with virtual chains, bridging assets, or using NEAR Intents, we’re making it easier than ever to build powerful, production-ready dApps in the Aurora ecosystem. Stay tuned - more innovation is coming next month!

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.