Aurora Bridge tl;dr

# Aurora Bridge tl;dr ## Overview (Aurora docs page scrolling in bg) My name is Ben the Human Man. I'm here with a tl;dr of Aurora's Rainbow Bridge. Aurora is an Ethereum Environment built on NEAR Protocol.  #### What does that mean? - If you're an Ethereum developer, this means your dev env will feel the same, but you'll have fast finality with low transaction costs (we're talking $0.02) for your users. - NEAR is a layer 1 blockchain with 2-3 second finality. It's scalable, and carbon neutral. Aurora supports all tools available in the ETH ecosystem - MetaMask, Truffle, Hardat, Remix.  #### How does this work? - NEAR has a trustless bridge, called RainbowBridge, to Ethereum. That's what we'll be covering today. - Getting started on Aurora is as easy as changing the RPC endpoint you interact with.  ## Getting Started - The bridge can be found at ***rainbowbridge.app*** or through **aurora.dev** - We are going to cover the Rainbow Bridge as well as the section of the Aurora documentation covering this topic (**doc.aurora.dev**).  ### Docs/Bridge/Bridge Overview - Bridge Overview: This section just walks you through the Rainbow Menu. It's pretty self-explanatory. The one takeaway is that you can connect to necessary networks - Ethereum, Aurora, and NEAR Protocol.  ### Docs/Bridge/Transfer Overview - The Transfer Page is conveninetly the landing page on the RainbowBridge web app. - Here, you can initialize a new transfer and view recent transactions. - There are two ways to move funds; Bridging or Sending. - **Bridging** allows you to move funds between wallets on DIFFERENT networks. - **Sending** allows you to move funds between wallets on the SAME network.  ### Docs/Bridge/Transfers Between Aurora/NEAR - Moving assets between NEAR and Aurora is simple. Fill in the details of the transfer, then "Connect" both wallets, and click "Continue". - Always keep a little extra in your wallets to cover Gas.  ### Docs/Bridge/Transfers from Ethereum - The setup for transferring FROM Ethereum is the same as transferring between Aurora and NEAR. However, there are a few extra steps IF the asset is an ERC-20 token. - MetaMask will appear to confirm the total amount you'll spend on Gas. Once you confirm, the transfer should complete in about 10 minutes. - Gas fees on ETH are exponentially higher than NEAR or Aurora, so be sure to keep a considerable amount of extra ETH in your wallet to cover fees. - As I mentioned, moving ERC-20 tokens requires a few more steps, but they just involve approving and confirming the transfer a couple of times both in the app and in MetaMask and takes about 10 minutes to complete.  ### Docs/Bridge/Transfers to Ethereum - Transferring TO Ethereum is a bit more involved, but not difficult. - All transfers to Ethereum require TWO transactions - The first transaction starts the transfer and can take up to **16 hours** - The second transaction finalizes the transfer. This way if Gas prices are high, you can wait until they drop for this step. There is no expiration. The transaction will be there on your dashboard when you're ready to finalize it. ### Docs/Bridge/Pending and Completed Transfers - You can find pending and completed transfers on the landing page with details for each one. - Additionaly, you can hide transfers, and set filters to see only certain types of transfers ### Docs/Bridge/Advanced Features - This feature is great for finding hidden transfers and restore them back on the home page so you can finalize them, etc. - Additionally, you can add deploy new tokens to the bridge, check on network status, and set approval limits on assets so you don't have to manually confirm every single transfer in MetaMask. ### Posibilities - What can you do with a bridge? - Interopoerability is the next step in building the open web. Blockchain networks need to connect just as internet networks connect today. - A bridge alllows you to move assets from the network they were created on to another network that doesn't understand what they are. - This means you can mint an NFT collection on NEAR, and sell those NFTs to ETH accounts. This is accomplished by locking the assets in NEAR, and creating ETH friendly versions of them on Ethereum. The transaction history of the NFTs is then synced between Ethereum and NEAR so no double spending occurs. - You can also bridge to a private chain where your transactions are sensitive, and simply have public versions of those transactions sent to the main blockchain so they can be verified by the world without leaking sensitive data. Anonymous voting, security of Personal Identifying Information, or PII. ### Final Thoughts - Thanks so much for watching! This is the very first episode in a series I hope you will find useful. Help us improve this series, but leaving a comment. Until next time, I'll see you on-chain. ###### tags: `tldr` `aurora`