Axelar, the universal overlay network delivering secure cross-chain communication for Web3, is partnering with Trisolaris and Aurigami to create a new cross-chain decentralized exchange (DEX) as well as a cross-chain money market for Aurora. These additional facilities will drive further growth of Aurora, which is NEAR Protocol’s Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). The new DEX and cross-chain money market will enable users holding AURORA, NEAR, or USN to use these currencies to buy and sell ETH, AVAX, DOT, or any other asset issued on Ethereum, Avalanche, or Polkadot. Asset holders can then deposit, borrow and lend on any chain in the cross-chain money market.

The partnership will utilize Squid, a liquidity routing module that enables cross-chain swaps and payments on Axelar, marking a huge step forward in the experience for users of both Aurora, and the broader NEAR community.

Sergey Gorbunov, Co-founder of Axelar said: “This is a major step we are taking to advance our vision of a cross-chain future onboarding millions of users into DeFi, NFT ownership, DAO governance, and other applications on the decentralized web. For Web3 to truly succeed, the user experience needs to be seamless. Our infrastructure addresses a major pain point of early Web3 adopters, enabling dApp users to interact with any asset or application, on any chain, with one click.”

Using Axelar’s infrastructure, users on Aurora and NEAR can buy any asset on any chain using Trisolaris’ cross-chain DEX, and deposit any assets on any chain to receive a loan on any other chain using Aurigami’s cross-chain money market. Trisolaris and Aurigami will serve as a gateway for liquidity from other chains into Aurora and the wider NEAR ecosystem. Axelar will provide secure cross-chain communication that allows Aurigami, Squid and Trisolaris to transact cross-chain in Turing-complete function calls that go beyond simple bridges. Squid will provide trustless liquidity and message routing via Axelar, allowing Aurigami and Trisolaris to plug and play into liquidity on any DeFi app on any chain.

Anton Paisov, Head of Integrations at Aurora Labs, said: "Aurora believes that cross-chain interoperability is where the future lies and our partnerships announced today only strengthen that conviction, bringing full cross-chain liquidity on Aurora and enabling both buying and loaning on any other chain, directly from Aurora, via the cutting-edge solutions that Axelar, Squid, Trisolaris and Aurigami have."

Evie, Business Development at Trisolaris, said: “At this point, ad-hoc cross-chain connections are accessible through the use of pairwise bridges, but enabling secure cross-chain communication over universal architecture moves the technology far beyond the current state. Axelar’s infrastructure has huge potential for decentralized exchanges, and this technology brings us closer to achieving mainstream adoption.”

Fig, Co-Founder of Squid, said: “This integration is the point where any user or application in crypto will gain access to the technology of Near and Aurora. Squid's integration with Trisolaris will enable larger volumes than ever to flow through the Aurora ecosystem, in the most capital efficient way. Now developers can leverage the smart contract modules and apps on Aurora no matter which chain their application or users live on."

A critical element of this integration involves Aurigami, one of the largest DeFi protocols in the Aurora ecosystem. Money markets serve as the backbones of DeFi ecosystems, enable permissionless lending and borrowing without a centralized intermediary, and building on top of Axelar, Aurigami could provide that functionality across multiple ecosystems for Aurora users.

EY Tan, Co-Founder of Aurigami, said: “We believe the omnichain future is inevitable. Through this partnership with Axelar, we aim to consolidate and concentrate cross-chain liquidity, enabling a higher capital efficiency and a more seamless experience for Aurora users. This will open up limitless new opportunities for Aurigami with other EVM chains and even the Cosmos ecosystem, enabling users to deposit assets on any chain, earn passive yields on assets, and access instant crypto-backed loans on any chain.”

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About Aurigami

Aurigami (PLY) enables users to lend, borrow, and earn interest with their digital assets. Depositors provide liquidity to the protocol to earn a passive income, while borrowers are able to borrow in an over-collateralized fashion. Aurigami is pioneering the concept of “Liquid Locked Tokens'' to allow a DeFi-native solution for vested tokens. Aurigami is backed by top-tier investors such as Dragonfly Capital as well as Polychain Capital and is a proud recipient of Proximity Lab's DeFi Grants.

About Aurora

Aurora is an Ethereum Layer-2 built on top of NEAR Protocol. Aurora delivers 1000x lower transaction fees compared to Ethereum and sub-two-second transaction finalization. Aurora is fully interoperable with Ethereum, with ETH used as a base token and all existing Ethereum tools usable out of the box. Aurora includes the trustless Rainbow bridge, allowing for bidirectional transfers of any information from Ethereum, including ERC-20s. To learn more about Aurora, please visit https://aurora.dev.

About Axelar

Axelar delivers secure cross-chain communication for Web3. As a universal overlay network, Axelar supports general message passing and composability of programs via a proof-of-stake transport layer. Developer tools and APIs make it easy for both protocol and application developers to integrate interoperability. Axelar has raised capital from top-tier investors, including Binance, Coinbase Ventures, Dragonfly Capital, and Polychain Capital. Partners include major proof-of-stake blockchains, such as Avalanche, Cosmos, Ethereum, Polkadot and Terra. Axelar’s co-founders are founding team members of Algorand and award-winning graduates of MIT, where they received notable recognition as part of their graduate studies.

For more information, visit axelar.network, or follow us on Twitter at @axelarcore, or LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/axelar/about/

About Squid

Squid is a cross-chain liquidity and messaging router, powered by Axelar. With a few lines of code, Squid enables one-click financial interactions between any application, chain or user. Our API and SDK is for dApp developers and projects who want to implement decentralized, modular and trustless cross-chain logic in the simplest possible way.

Follow Squid on Twitter and join their community on Discord here.

About Trisolaris

Trisolaris is the first and main AMM DEX on Aurora with an ethos for simple UI/UX, decentralization and a multi-chain future. It is a community-owned one-stop trading platform with low fees and fast transactions. Users get a seamless trading experience similar to native Ethereum for a fraction of the cost, taking advantage of the great underlying technology provided by Near and Aurora. Learn more about us at https://trisolaris.io.