Aurora Partners with NEAR MetaBUIDL Hackathon

MetaBUIDL Hackathon Series

Interested in solving real-world problems combined with the new reality of Metaverse and Blockchain?

Join us for the first in a series of NEAR MetaBUIDL hackathons with $1 million in global prizes.

Part physical, part virtual - the first MetaBUIDL Hackathon runs from Aug 27 to Sep 12.

By joining these epic events, participants will get access to countless community-driven innovations from across the NEAR ecosystem, along with opportunities to fund their future projects. All developers — both solo and teams — are welcome to build on existing concepts or create their own.

Aurora Challenge

Aurora offers its challenge with a $5,000 of NEAR prize co-sponsored by NEAR Foundation.

Aurora-to-NEAR cross-contract calls

It is currently possible (though undocumented) to call smart contracts deployed inside Aurora from smart contracts deployed in the NEAR base runtime. However, it is currently impossible for contracts on Aurora to call contracts on NEAR. The purpose of this challenge is to make Aurora-to-NEAR cross-contract calls possible.

The specifics of the technical solution are up to the developer creating a submission for this challenge, however you may consider modelling it after the exit-to-near custom EVM precompile which is used to move ETH from Aurora to NEAR. This solution would look something like the following:

• Create a new custom precompile (say call_to_near)
• Create a new private method on the engine contract (say near_callback) which can resume the contract which called the call_to_near precompile, including the result of the promise.
• The precompile can create a promise which performs the desired cross-contract call, and uses the callback to process the result.
  • Note: the promise should not be immediately created by the precompile, but instead done at the end of a successful transaction to take the possibility of reverting in the EVM into account.

Submission Requirements

Regardless of the specifics of the technical solution, it must be possible to write a contract for Aurora (i.e. compiles to EVM bytecode) which calls out to a smart contract on NEAR and is able to work the result of that call.

Judging Criteria

Submissions will be judged according to the following criteria:

• Does it work? (Can cross contract calls be made?)
  • If it does work, is there a cool demo?
• What is the developer experience like?
  • Is calling out to NEAR and working with the result cumbersome in EVM-based contracts?
• Code quality

Let's BUIDL!

The time for mass crypto adoption is here. Participate in NEAR MetaBUIDL series of hackathons, go for the Aurora challenge, win prizes and find community connections. You can browse all challenges here.

Aurora will continue to support blockchain developers and is always happy to see talented engineers who contribute to solving real-world problems.