Aurora Update [2021-04-23]

[alexauroradev]

The video of the call is available here.
The forum discussion is available here.

Agenda

• Status, current goal
• Updates
• Discussion
  • Performance metrics
  • OKRs for Q2'21
• Next week

Status, current goal

NEAR client contract was updated and now block addition consumes up to 70% less gas. Full forces on fast Aurora delivery (early May).

Planned items:

• AS: Aurora release management, hiring, finalise OKRs & Roadmap
• MF: NEP-141 bridging to Aurora, unfinished transfers monitoring
• EK: resolving issues
  • Timeboxed security review (1d)
• KA: Update eth-connector, implement ERC20, check: https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine
• PAO: finish eNEAR development, finalise Faucet integration, refactoring
• MH: finish $AURORA token model, finalise Aurora bridge UI prototype, finalise the draft versions of the content for the web-site

Weekly update

Alex Shevchenko

• Aurora management: legal, token
• Hiring activities
• Marketing activities (Maker call, Binance KZ AMA)

Arto Bendiken

• Intensive work on the Aurora Relayer for production deployment:
  • Comprehensive review of needed RPC methods and their implementation status.
  • Implementation of most missing RPC methods.
  • Request/response logging (with request IDs), rate limiting, IP blacklists.
  • Support for configuration files and local key management.
  • Architectural deliberations: the Relayer needs to maintain state.
  • https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-relayer
• Stood up the BetaNet and TestNet relayers.
• Improved error handling in the Aurora Engine:
  • https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine
• Began working on the Aurora documentation website:
  • https://doc.aurora.dev
  • https://github.com/aurora-is-near/doc.aurora.dev
• Began working on a Hardhat plugin for Aurora:
  • https://github.com/aurora-is-near/hardhat-aurora

Eugene Kapun

• Review of PRs
  • near-erc20-connector
• Review of NEAR to Eth relayer

Eugene Ukhanov

• Added new logic for eth-conenctor (ERC20) [95% completion].
• Continuously syncing with Kirill, Alex on new connectors design.

Frank Braun

• evm-bully: added continuous integration
• Fixed all linter errors.
• Debugged problem with aurora to properly initialize the contract state on TestNet and be able to check ownership in the Aurora Engine.
• Borsh encode the genesis state.
• Use it in the begin_block() function to set initial balances.
• We can now replay Görli up to block 12842.
• Next steps:
  • Fix "Exceeded the prepaid gas" error.
  • Batching to improve performance.

Joshua Bouw

• Fixed a serialization bug in the bn128 library.
• Added lots of new public API to the bn128 libary and completed the bn128 library.
• Finished all the precompiles for the aurora-engine.
• Wrote all spec tests for the precompiles of the aurora-engine.
• Added a transfer method to the aurora-engine to unblock Frank with the EVM bully.
• Wrote the code for the faucet which will distribute coins on testnet, the make_it_rain method 😉💰🌧️.
• Started work on the Engine implemenation from Sputnik.
• Working on completing the EVM Math API on nearcore.
• Moved blake2 lib into nearcore crypto library

Kirill Abramov

• Continuously syncing with Evgeny, Alex, Marcelo on new connectors design.
• Eth-connector minor improvements.
• Implemented Eth-to-Near event relayer (for the relaying of both ERC20Locker and EthCustodian events).

Marcelo Fornet

• Review eNEAR connector
• Started ERC20 connector to the EVM (in collaboration with Kirill)
• Tested Eth-Connector
• Deployed optimised version of the NearOnEth Client
• Checking issues with failing proofs (MPT of receipts is not always consistent)
• Enhancement tasks in our repositories (removed stale branches, moved repos to aurora-is-near org)

Matt Henderson

• Work related to the Aurora launch
• Designing & developing the Aurora Bridge
• Creating draft content for the site
• Meetings related to legal and admin issues
• Small amount of Rainbow Bridge testing

Michael Birch

• EVM benchmarking work
  • Aurora Engine Benchmarks aurora-is-near/aurora-engine#41
• Eth-connector review (old logic, not improved logic)
  • EVM tokens deposit & withdraw aurora-is-near/aurora-engine#24 (review)

Pierre-Alain Ouvrard

• eNEAR client development (integration pending testnet deployment)
• New UI for claiming wallet with faucet
• Various frontend fixes and features
• Telegram support

Discussion

EVM Bully

• Initial performance figures from the first runs?
  • No way how to get this info
• Comparison of block state at #12842 vis-a-vis Goerli?
  • Let's do it later

Gas metrics

• How much Ethereum gas we can fit into 300 TGas (one tx limit)?
• How much NEAR gas does it take for simple Ethereum transactions:
  • Base token transfer
  • ERC20 transfer
  • StandardPrecompiles test cases
• How much Ethereum gas we can fit into one NEAR block?
• How much does a typical EVM transaction cost, concretely?

RPC implementation

• There're some RPC methods that are hard to implement (there's a need to have --accountId account)
• https://eth.wiki/json-rpc/API#eth_getTransactionByHash

Bridge speedup

• Link to discussion: Speeding up token connector #569
• Do we need to decrease the priority for realistic bridge?
  • Probebly, yes.

OKRs for Q2'21

• Finalised version of the OKRs: https://airtable.com/shrebRGFmAlDQrMJu

Social media for Aurora

• https://github.com/aurora-is-near
• https://twitter.com/auroraisnear
• https://t.me/auroraisnear
• https://t.me/auroraisneardev
• https://t.me/auroraisnearsupport
• #aurora-is-near:matrix.org

Next week

• FB: Fix the error with #12842, batching txs
• AS: hiring, legal structure & supportive docs, bridge docs
• AB: Adding relayer methods, adding web-socket support; security aspects, indexing Aurora transactions; documentation, hardhat plugin
• EK: help Marcelo with proof generation bug, eth-connector review, near2eth-relayer fixing
• EU: finish eth-connector, test and debug it, precompiles
• JB: engine implementation, completing Math API, supporting Frank
• KA: finish event-relayer, add tests for eth-connector, perhaps, additional indexing for event-relayer
• MH: move prototype repo to aurora-is-near, handover the prototype to Pierre, make the website ready for internal review on Friday
• MF: ERC-20 connector, bug fix of proof generation
• MB: keep working on benchmarking, also some free time for additional tasks
• PAO: Aurora FE implementation, catching up on eth-connector