Impossible Finance Research Report #14 — Aura Network
The rise in popularity of NFTs within 2021 helped onboard a significant number of non-crypto native users into the space, with chains such as Ethereum gaining significantly more adoption and traction as the rise in floor prices of specific collections attracted more eyes due to users hoping to mint the next collection following in the footsteps of BAYC or CryptoPunks. This can be seen in the total number of monthly traders below, with an average of 10,000 total monthly traders in January 2021, to an increase of 550,000 total monthly traders in January 2022. A significant increase in the number of users, clearly highlighting a strong level of continued adoption, mainly due to NFTs hitting mainstream media. Moreover, the rise of NFT adoption can also be attributed to the relative ease of understanding the product, people have been fond of collecting for a very long time — think of artworks, antiques, watches, it all elicits the same type of emotional response that NFTs currently provide, and due to its accessible nature it has created the level of attention currently being seen. This further contributes to our overall thesis of NFTs being the main source of continual adoption and a far greater likelihood of onboarding the next million users.
However, chains such as Ethereum, which is often seen as the main chain for blue-chip or top tier NFTs, have not been able to efficiently cater towards the rise in demand and participation within the NFT ecosystem, with various NFT mints often isolating users with limited access to funds and Ether as gas fees for popular mints often cost thousands of dollars, thus only allowing users with significant resources to be able to continuously mint and profit of popular mints from various NFT collections. This really showcased the inefficiencies of Ethereum as a platform or network for highly congested NFT use cases, and thus the need for a network that solely focuses on NFTs and their use cases has often been repetitively questioned. This creates a need for a network that is able to cater towards the demands of the NFT ecosystem and its community, ensuring mints that are fair and inexpensive, as well as a network where the creation of NFTs is fostered and developed.
Project Overview
Introducing Aura Network, a layer-1, NFT-centric blockchain that aims to expand the limits of NFTs currently seen within the cryptocurrency and web3 space, through integrating and adding solutions that help introduce the use of NFTs across additional and existing industries. Aura Network’s vision is to create a one-stop destination for minting, evaluating, querying, and transacting NFTs, by providing infrastructure that helps foster and nurture the whole NFT ecosystem as a whole, from minters, to secondary buyers and to collection creators. This can be seen through the implementation of features and products within the Aura ecosystem shown below.
The Aura ecosystem can be split and divided into 4 different layers: Infrastructure, Currency, dApps, and OpenApi, with each layer providing different value to ecosystem players and providing Aura with the ability to achieve its goal of becoming the one-stop destination for NFTs. Firstly, Infrastructure within Aura networks consists of all the resources relating to the underlying blockchain platform, and includes the node client Aurad as well as genesis blocks, configuration files, IBC and deployed services serving Aura Network, allowing Aura Network to help maximize interoperability through its infrastructure.
Aura Network has 2 native currencies within its ecosystem: Aura Coin and Aura Token. Aura Token can be seen as a placeholder that is first issued on Binance Smart Chain, with the ability to convert to Aura Coin when the Aura Network Mainnet launches. Once released, Aura Coin will be mainly used for paying transaction fees, with other services such as staking, providing liquidity, and governance benefits. Aura also supports creating CW20 tokens, similar to other blockchains that use the CosmWasm module.dApps within Aura Network aims to offer and provide a strong user experience for past users within the DeFi and NFT space, ensuring a smooth transition from other chains to Aura Network itself. Aura Network will introduce key dApps to ensure growth of its NFT ecosystem, such as its very own native NFT marketplace for efficient trading of NFTs, a blockchain explorer with extra features for governing and staking, a playground for developers to test contracts, a NFT Hub for the Aura community to interact, and other features that aim to build out Aura Network’s main vision. Finally, applications building on Aura Network are required to provide standard open APIs for the public, ensuring that querying from a blockchain ledger becomes significantly easier, as standards are aligned. This is made possible through the Aura Indexer, which is a comprehensive project where Aura Network is able to process every blockchain transaction and state data in every block and store results in a NoSQL database for better query handling. The indexer also provides identical APIs with the node RPC so clients don’t have to change their existing API call, therefore making it compatible with other Cosmos based blockchain.
The combination of the four layers discussed above allows Aura Network to provide its users with 3 main features:
- A universal framework for all stakeholders to create a one stop destination for developing new NFT use cases
- A multi-chain platform that can support both crypto communities and traditional businesses
- An infrastructure layer for building and integrating your applications to the metaverse
Project Highlights
- Partners and Investors include Coin98 Ventures, GBV Capital, FPT, Impossible Finance, Kucoin Labs, Kyber Ventures, NGC Ventures, SNZ, GuildFi, Avalanche Asia Star Fund, MEXC Pioneer, TPX Ventures, Vanda Capital, RedlineDAO, AhaMove, Oracles Investment Group, DEO Network, Ecomobi, K300, and Pencil.
- $2.5 million worth of funding secured from Seed Round led by Coin98 Ventures, Kyber Ventures, Kucoin Labs and GBV Capital.
- Strong regional support with key integrations implemented such as introducing Coin98 wallet as the official wallet for Aura Network.
Quick Metrics
- Public Sale Token Price: 1 AURA = 0.065 BUSD
- Total Token Supply: 1,000,000,000 AURA
- Launchpad Sale Hard Cap: USD750,000 (split into multiple pools)
- Standard pool: 390,000 (60%)
- Unlimited pool: 260,000 (40%)
- Whitelist allocation: 100,000
Investment Thesis
Maximizes Interoperability and Security by enabling Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC)
IBC is the signature Cosmos module that supports transferring tokens directly from one chain to another. Aura Network enables IBC by default, allowing the transfer of assets from chains such as Terra, Atom, Osmosis or other IBC-enabled blockchains with ease, allowing Aura Network to maximize interoperability through allowing heterogeneous chains to trustlessly communicate with each other and exchange value. This is essential for new chains such as Aura Network, as maximizing interoperability allows Aura to reap the benefits of other IBC enabled chains, enabling them to specialize on a single use case with greater effects. For example, similar to how countries partake in exporting goods around the world, rather than silo-ing all resources in a single place, it naturally allows a greater use of time and an improvement in productivity. Furthermore, by utilizing IBC, it naturally reduces the barriers to entry associated with a new chain because of the ability to seamlessly move from chain to chain, allowing users to be onboarded to Aura Network with relative ease. Coupled with the catalysts that aim to grow Aura Network as a NFT-centric chain, implementing IBC allows the bootstrapping of users to Aura with minimal cost.
Enabling IBC by default does not only maximize interoperability, but also security when bridging. This is because, most popular cross-chain bridges such as Synapse, Connext and Multichain (previously Anyswap) are built by independent and external third parties, and thus security within these external bridges are often drastically different and not as secure. This can already be seen within exploits in bridges such as Multichain, with over $3 million in assets being stolen. With the implementation of IBC as a default within Aura Network, Aura is able to prevent this by ensuring that security isn’t compromised, as IBC is able to send data and thus assets via a dedicated channel by a trustless relayer and then authenticated once reaching Aura Network.
Ability to bootstrap users through implementing innovative technology and partnerships built on top of Aura Network
Alongside building out its essential dApps for launch, Aura Network has been able to secure innovative partnerships with projects such as Artaverse, who aim to reduce the barrier to entry for NFTs to not only retail users, but also for creators. Artaverse can be seen as a tool that allows artists and event producers to simultaneously create thousands of NFTs with different traits and thus rarity effortlessly, allowing users on Aura Network to have the opportunity and access to create NFTs and distribute them to a larger audience based on their choice. This significantly reduces the amount of time needed to create an NFT, as tools such as Artaverse can enable a wide range of users with minimal amounts of experience to be able to create, akin to how no-code tools will be able to benefit a much greater audience.
In the first drop with Artaverse, Aura Network collaborates with VNExpress, one of the most popular Vietnamese newspapers to produce a musical event and capture its main moments through the NFTs created from Artaverse, to be distributed to users and collectors. These NFTs can be seen as high quality video clips that are unique, licensed and will never be published in any other form online, ensuring both exclusivity and rarity. As both Aura Network and Artaverse continue to build out its roadmap, expect the partnership between Aura Network and Artaverse to be more community oriented, with independent artists using this tool to produce their very own licensed high quality NFTs. In addition, Artaverse will help Aura Network bootstrap more non-crypto native users as it will also integrate a local payment gateway so fans are able to purchase these NFTs with both cryptocurrencies and fiat.
Future Roadmap
Aura Network currently plans on ensuring that the main and basic dApps are implemented and fully functional during its release, with continuous innovation to improve the user experience for users within those dApps. As Aura Network continues to develop, the team plans on focusing and developing various NFT use cases related to both SocialFi and GameFi by 2022, thus allowing Aura to be seen as one of the main networks that helps develop and nurture the ecosystem surrounding NFTs. Finally, Aura Network believes in a multichain future, and will focus on developing bridges to other networks and metaverse connectors.
Team
Aura Network’s core team started the network in October of last year, with a significant emphasis on developing Aura Network with over 50 software developers and 12 backend developers. Together, the core team makes up a vast amount of experience ranging from web2 and web3 companies and start-ups. Giang Tran, Aura Network’s main founder, drives Aura Network’s strategy and growth, and is a member of Forbes Technological Council, with significant expertise within cloud and blockchain technology. Together with the team’s qualified developers, it provides Aura Network with a great opportunity to continue building towards its roadmap.
$AURA Token Metrics
- Total Token Supply: 1,000,000,000 AURA
- Launchpad Sale Hard Cap: USD750,000 (split into multiple pools)
- Standard pool: 390,000 (60%)
- Unlimited pool: 260,000 (40%)
- Whitelist allocation: 100,000 - Token Vesting: 100% distributed on day 1
- Listing Price: US$0.065
Risk Evaluation
One of Aura Network’s main risk as a network focusing on NFTs and their use cases would be their ability to gain adoption in the long-run as it continues to build out its features and essential dApps. However, Aura Network has been able to mitigate this risk through a variety of solutions, such as engaging strong regional ecosystem support in the form of investments through Coin98 ventures and its native wallet, ensuring easy transition for Coin98 wallet users on other chains. In addition, the implementation of partnerships and dApps that help reduce the barrier to entry and maximize interoperability sets Aura Network up for success as it continues to develop and build.
About Aura Network
Aura Network, a layer-1, NFT-centric blockchain that aims to expand the limits of NFTs currently seen within the cryptocurrency and web3 space, through integrating and adding solutions that help introduce the use of NFTs across additional and existing industries.
Website | Twitter | Telegram | Blog
About Impossible Finance
Impossible Finance is a multi-chain incubator, launchpad, and swap platform led by Ex-Binance & DeFi veterans. It offers a robust product-first ecosystem that supports top-tier blockchain projects to targeted user audiences. With extensive support from key leaders in the crypto industry, Impossible Finance simplifies DeFi for users to enjoy fairer investing, cheaper trading and better yields.
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- Notes: DISCLAIMERS, TERMS, and RISKS
- Risk Warning: Trading and/or generally investing in any cryptocurrency involve significant risks and can result in the complete loss of your capital. You should not invest more than you can afford to lose and you should ensure that you fully understand the risks involved. Before investing, please consider your level of experience, objectives, and risk tolerance, and seek independent financial and legal advice if necessary. It is your responsibility to ascertain whether you are permitted to use the services of Impossible Finance based on the legal and regulatory requirements of your country of residence and/or applicable jurisdiction(s).
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