AURORA Token Distribution V.1

The intent of this post is to give you a clear picture of the initial distribution of tokens for the AURORA protocol.

Each section should be self-explanatory but there are some methodological notes at the end. The charts will generally present the most conservative case when there is a choice. The accuracy or certainty of numbers may vary by category, as noted below.

This is the first token distribution schedule post for AURORA and all subsequent changes to the post will be noted in the Changelog section at the end so it is clear how up-to-date it is and what has changed between versions.

About AURORA

AURORA is an Ethereum compatibility solution created by the team at the NEAR Protocol, delivering a turn-key solution for developers to operate their Ethereum apps on a high-throughput, scalable and future-safe platform, with low transaction costs for their users.

AURORA is a product that helps Ethereum users and dApps to easily move to the NEAR blockchain. It allows to do two distinct things: upload and interact with Solidity smart contracts on NEAR blockchain and move assets from Ethereum to NEAR (including ERC-20 tokens).

Key facts

The Aurora DAO approved the creation of the official project governance token, AURORA, with a total supply of 1 billion. The token was deployed on Ethereum as non-upgradable ERC-20 with fixed supply, and then bridged to NEAR and AURORA using the trustless Rainbow Bridge. Here are respective links to the token on NEAR and Aurora protocols.

There were 1,000,000,000 Aurora tokens (AURORA) created at Genesis on October 7, 2021. The current allocation consists of:

• 20% (200 million) – Community Treasury

• 16% (160 million) – Aurora Labs long term incentives. Tokens are subjected to a vesting scheme determined by Aurora Labs.

• 9% (90 million) – Aurora Labs private round investors. These tokens are subjected to the unlocking scheme.

• 3% (30 million) – Allocated to Aurora validator delegators.

• 2% (20 million) – Early AURORA contributors. Allocations should be provided by NEAR Foundation. These tokens should be subjected to the unlocking scheme. NEAR Foundation may implement a vesting scheme for these tokens.

• 1% (10 million) – Allocated to Aurora Labs to be used as incentives for project advisors

• 1% (10 million) – Allocated for bootstrapping the AURORA ecosystem.

• 3% (30 million) – Allocated for Aurora Labs growth round

• 2.6% (26 million) – Allocated for ongoing grant programs

• 1.8 % (18 million) – Allocated for ongoing projects

• 40.6% (406 million) – Kept on the DAO balance for future projects

As the Protocol grows and new initiatives are approved, the allocation changes: new categories might be added or aggregated. No changes in the currently distributed tokens can be made.

Part of the ‘DAO project’ bucket was allocated to Grant programs for the developers and talents that support development of the protocol. There is also allocation to the Ongoing projects which are currently represented by Bug bounty and Aurora Plus initiatives.

Planning circulating supply

“Circulating Supply” is every token that isn’t subject to a lockup at a particular time. The vast majority of the AURORA supply is subject to long-term lockups. All supply is planned to be unlocked by month 132 from Token Generation Event on November 18, 2021 (TGE).

The chart below shows the increase in circulating supply as tokens unlock:

Components of circulating supply

The following chart provides more detail on the components of the circulating supply as it grows over time.

The following chart provides a closer look to the components of circulating supply within only 36 months following TGE.

Private round investors

9% of all tokens was allocated to Aurora Labs private round investors. According to the most recent DAO decision from April 2022 with the following schedule: 2 unlocks of 3.25M AURORA in May and August 2022, 3.5M AURORA in November 2022 and 8 consequent unlocks of 10M AURORA on every third month starting from February 2023. All the tokens will be unlocked at the end of the month 36

Aurora Labs long term incentives

AURORA protocol is being built by a talented and recognised professional team from the second half of 2020. Aurora Labs is a major contributor to the AURORA ecosystem. The focus of Aurora Labs is to develop AURORA tech, which includes Aurora Engine and Rainbow Bridge. Besides that, there are four new products that are in development at the moment:

• Aurora+ – a product focused on simplification of blockchain user experience – presented on 17th of May 2022
• Jet (draft name) – a community treasury platform – not launched yet, please see the relevant discussion on the governance forum.
• Secret project – focused on the scalability of AURORA network – not launched yet
• Governance platform – an extension of AuroraDAO focused on further decentralization of the governance – not launched yet, see relevant discussion on the governance forum.

Team's allocation provides reasonable incentivisation and governance participation when the governance tools are implemented.

The unlocking scheme for this stream is a modified version of standard 4 year linear unlock; 1 year cliff scheme. Instead of unlocking 25% (40M AURORA) of the tokens after 12 month, only 10% (16M AURORA) are unlocked, while the remaining 15% (24M AURORA) are distributed linearly over the months 13 - 24 (in addition to other 40M AURORA provided by the initial scheme). The distribution of remaining 50% (80M AURORA) is linear over months 25 - 48.

Such updated distribution allows to smoothen the cliff and ensure the steady unlock of the tokens.

It's worth mentioning that not all of the AURORA tokens have been allocated to the team already: there is an unallocated supply kept for the future growth of the team. From this supply the vesting agreements for the newcomers are funded.

Community treasury

As it was stated by the DAO previously, 200 million AURORA tokens are devoted to the community treasury. AURORA token holders should be able to decide on the distribution of these tokens to the initiatives and projects that are planning to launch on Aurora.

It's expected that community voting mechanics will be implemented in the third quarter of 2022 and the Aurora community will be able to allocate its treasury to the most promising projects.

Aurora Labs growth round

Aurora DAO has voted on the allocation of 3% of AURORA tokens (30M) to Aurora Labs on 18th of April 2022 in this proposal, to conclude a growth round. Because of unfavorable market conditions, Aurora Labs decided to delay the round. Below is the planned distribution of these tokens to growth round investors.

DAO projects (grant programs, ongoing and future projects)

Current initiatives of the Aurora DAO consist of grant programs (Proximity partnership and Fast grants program), ongoing projects (bug bounty program, and bootstrapping Aurora+ through AURORA stream, ecosystem streams and airdrop) and future projects.

As of June 2022, grant programs and ongoing projects are fully determined buckets that have fixed distribution. Future projects bucket is unclear and below the assumed distribution provided. The plan is that this component will be gradually used to fund specific DAO projects until its full allocation within 11 years after TGE to ensure continuous growth of the Aurora ecosystem.

The below chart presents only 36 months from the TGE.

Conclusion

AURORA will update the above information regularly. If you are interested in analytics and exploring these numbers (or if you find errors/inconsistencies), please feel free to create tools or views and let us know at [email protected]. Some of these tools may also be eligible for grants. If you are interested in building on AURORA please submit your ideas to https://aurora.dev/grants or find your career opportunities on https://auroralabs.dev/. There are some for you even if you don’t have a blockchain background.

Appendix A: Methodological Notes

1. Time buckets should be read as “end of month” unless otherwise noted, meaning the bucket for “month 12” includes the initial balance on the first day of that month plus any change within that month. “Month 0” is the only bucket which is typically used to represent genesis without any additional time.
2. Distribution streams are different. Some of them (for example, private round investors) are accurate and others (future DAO projects) contain projected values.
3. Amounts are intended to be accurate but may still contain imprecisions and are subject to change.
4. This document is intended to be updated over time to reflect changes in the distribution streams and keep the community up to date about the current AURORA distribution.

Appendix B: Initial distribution and changes applied to it until June 2022

There were 1,000,000,000 Aurora tokens (AURORA) created at Genesis on October 7, 2021. The following allocation was approved by the Aurora DAO:

• 20% (200 million), unlocked, kept - Community Treasury

• 16% (160 million), locked, transferred - Aurora Labs long term incentives. Tokens are subjected to a vesting scheme determined by Aurora Labs.

• 9% (90 million), locked, transferred - Aurora Labs initial equity investors. These tokens are subjected to the unlocking scheme.

• 3% (30 million), unlocked, transferred - Allocated to Aurora Labs to be distributed to the NEAR ecosystem over the next three years. These tokens should be distributed linearly evenly to the delegators of the Aurora validator. Aurora validator should switch to the following scheme of operations: fees should be equal to 30%, with 10% burned, and 20% used to fund the Rainbow Bridge operations and Aurora RPC.

• 2% (20 million), locked, transferred - Early AURORA contributors. Allocations should be provided by NEAR Foundation. These tokens should be subjected to the unlocking scheme. NEAR Foundation may implement a vesting scheme for these tokens.

• 1% (10 million), unlocked, transferred - Allocated to Aurora Labs to be used as incentives for project advisors

• 1% (10 million), unlocked, transferred - Allocated to be used for bootstrapping the AURORA ecosystem. These tokens should be used for IDO (public sale through one or multiple DEXes), deployment of pools on AMMs, market making, early partnerships, and other activities. IDO parameters should be approved by the DAO.

• 48% (480 million), unlocked, kept - Kept on the DAO balance for future projects

Implemented changes:

• Aurora IDO was approved by the DAO on 2nd of November 2021. Details of the IDO can be found here.
• Because of the development of the new staking farm validator, parameters of the Aurora validator have been refined in this post and voted by the DAO on 21st of January, 2022 (multiple proposals) and updated to allow for the rounding bug with this proposal.
• The unlocking schedule for the private round investors was delayed on 26th of April 2022. Details on the new unlocking scheme can be found here.
• The unlocking schedule for the Aurora Labs team members was delayed on 24 of June 2022 to support the smoother unlocks of AURORA in the market.

Appendix C: Change Log

24 June 2022 - initial version 06 July 2023 - current