Secure Cross-Chain Lending & Liquidity Are Coming to Aurora

4 min readAug 25, 2022

Trisolaris & Aurigami are partnering with Axelar & Squid to create a cross-chain DEX and cross-chain money market on Aurora, Near Protocol’s EVM Chain

The future is cross-chain. To onboard the next millions of users into DeFi, NFT ownership, DAO governance, and other applications that interact directly on the decentralized web, their experiences must be universal and seamless. No more maintaining multiple private-key identities; no more risky bridges with bad UX.

In this vision of Web3’s future, a user holding AURORA, NEAR, or USN can use those currencies to buy ETH, BTC, SOL, or any asset issued on any of those chains. Not only that, the user can deposit these assets to receive loans on any chain and vice versa.

For users of the Aurora blockchain, this will soon be possible, through a new partnership announced by four innovators in cross-chain liquidity. In a nutshell, users on Aurora and NEAR will be able to:

Buy any asset on any chain via Trisolaris’ cross-chain DEX.
Deposit assets on any chain to receive a loan on any other chain via Aurigami’s cross-chain money market.

This cross-chain future will drastically improve utility and user experience for the Aurora & NEAR community, which in turn will drive further growth for this ecosystem.

Primitive cross-chain connections are not difficult, as the proliferation of pairwise bridges demonstrates. Secure cross-chain communication over universal architecture is a step beyond the current state of cross-chain bridges.

Cross-chain DEX Powered by Squid

This collaboration introduces cross-chain liquidity on Aurora, going a step beyond secure cross-chain communication. Trisolaris, Axelar & Squid are supporting a network of liquidity for cross-chain swaps, extending across Web3, without involving a centralized exchange.

Enter Squid. Squid is a cross-chain swap and liquidity routing module built on Axelar. Squid utilizes Axelar’s generalized message passing to enable native swaps between any token on any chain. Squid exposes an API and SDK to interact with its smart contracts, so that DEXs can go cross-chain with minimal changes to their code. Send and swap any token to any chain, without needing to deal with bridges and wrapped assets. Trisolaris will be able to service any user on any chain.

Here’s how it works:

Trisolaris, the largest DEX on Aurora, will provide a gateway for liquidity from other chains into Aurora and the wider Near ecosystem.
Axelar will provide secure cross-chain communication that allows Squid, and Trisolaris to transact cross-chain in Turing-complete function calls that go beyond bridges.
Squid will provide trustless liquidity and message routing via Axelar, allowing Trisolaris to plug and play into liquidity on any DeFi app on any chain.

Cross-chain Money Market

Money markets are the backbones of any DeFi ecosystem. DeFi money markets have essentially enabled permissionless lending and borrowing without any centralized intermediary. These platforms offer users instantaneous access to cryptocurrency liquidity and even earn yield with their otherwise idle assets. Users will also be able to borrow digital assets using the liquidity they have supplied as collateral, unlocking even more possibilities with liquidity strategies. Aurigami is one of the largest lending DeFi protocols in the Aurora ecosystem, amassing over 30m of liquidity at time of writing. Aurigami eyes an expansion to other EVM chains and even the Cosmos ecosystem, ultimately establishing a chain-agnostic, one-shop platform for users to access cross-chain liquidity seamlessly, effortlessly. The partnership with Axelar will be a key step towards achieving this vision.

Here’s how it works:

Aurigami will explore a gateway for users to deposit a variety of assets on any of the 18 chains currently supported by Axelar (with many more to come).
These assets could be seamlessly routed to Aurora in the background leveraging Axelar’s cross-chain messaging technology
Based on a LTV ratio users will be able to obtain a loan on any chain supported by Axelar.

“The omnichain future is inevitable considering how the growth of blockchain infrastructure needs to stay ahead of its user base. Capital in DeFi is already fragmented across countless ecosystems and protocols, and will only get worse as more L1s, L2s and sidechains appear. Aurigami aims to consolidate and concentrate cross-chain liquidity to enable a higher capital efficiency and more seamless experience for the end user in the future”
- Lucas Huang, co-founder of Aurigami

Get in touch

Aurigami: [Aurigami.finance / Twitter / Discord]
Aurora: [Aurora.dev / Twitter / Discord]
Axelar: [Axelar.network | Twitter | Discord]
Squid: [0xsquid.com / Twitter / Discord]
Trisolaris: [Trisolaris.io / Twitter / Discord]

About Aurora

Powered by its high-performance EVM, and fully trustless Rainbow Bridge, Aurora combines an Ethereum compatible experience with the modern blockchain performance of NEAR Protocol. Aurora provides an an optimal environment for the creation of scalable, carbon-neutral, future-safe, and low-cost Web3 services, as well as the perfect tools to bring to life your Web3 initiatives. Try Aurora Cloud, our all-in-one cloud solution for enterprises, and get your Web3 journey started!