Aura

Aura is to Balancer what Convex is to Curve: it aggregates veBAL voting power to maximize Balancer gauge boosts, letting BAL/BPT holders earn boosted, auto-compounded rewards without locking BAL themselves.

The dominant veBAL aggregator, steering Balancer emissions and underpinning the Balancer bribe market.

- auraBAL: Liquid wrapper token minted when a user deposits the 80BAL-20WETH Balancer Pool Token (BPT) into Aura, which permanently locks it as veBAL. auraBAL is issued 1:1 for the underlying veBAL exposure and, unlike native veBAL, is transferable and tradable. Stakers earn a share of BAL revenue and veBAL fees plus AURA rewards, without maintaining the 1-year Balancer lock themselves. - vlAURA (vote-locked AURA): Governance and vote-direction token obtained by locking AURA for 16 weeks. vlAURA holders vote every two weeks on which Balancer gauges receive BAL emissions, effectively steering the veBAL that Aura controls. A gauge must reach at least 0.1% of vlAURA voting supply to receive Aura-directed emissions. - Reward Pools / BPT staking: Users deposit Balancer Pool Tokens into Aura reward pools to earn boosted BAL (from Aura's aggregated veBAL boost) plus additional AURA emissions, earned block-by-block, without individually locking BAL. - Hidden Hand bribe/incentive market: Meta-governance incentive marketplace integrated with Aura where protocols pay vlAURA voters to direct BAL emissions to their gauges. Aura 'core pools' route 65% of the fees they generate as voting incentives on Hidden Hand each two-week veBAL gauge cycle.

- Aura Finance (AURA): Token, Governance token (vlAURA vote-locked) - auraBAL (auraBAL): Receipt, Locked / Vote-Escrow Receipt

- Systemic: Aura is entirely dependent on Balancer and veBAL. Its value proposition (boosted BAL, gauge voting, auraBAL yield) collapses if Balancer's gauge/emissions system, BAL token value, or veBAL mechanics fail or are deprecated. Aura holds no independent yield source outside the Balancer ecosystem. - Smart Contract: Exposure to Balancer's August 22, 2023 Boosted-Pool vulnerability: because Aura stakes Balancer LP tokens (including boosted pools), it inherits upstream Balancer contract risk. Roughly 1.4% of Balancer TVL was at risk across eight chains; Aura was a 'friendly protocol' notified and reliant on rapid LP withdrawals to avoid loss. - Governance: vlAURA voting power is concentrated and openly tradable. Because votes can be bought via the Hidden Hand bribe market, a well-capitalized actor can rent large vlAURA influence to redirect BAL emissions, and large lockers can dominate AIP outcomes — a meta-governance centralization / bribe-capture risk. - Reserve / Depeg: auraBAL can trade below its 1:1 veBAL reference value. Minting auraBAL is one-way (the underlying is permanently locked as veBAL), so exits depend on secondary-market liquidity in the auraBAL pool; thin liquidity or a rush to exit can push auraBAL to a persistent discount / depeg. - Oracle: The upstream Balancer Boosted-Pool incident originated from a mismatch between the rate formula in Boosted Pools and an external rate/oracle data source. Aura positions built on rate-provider-dependent Balancer pools inherit that oracle/rate-manipulation surface.

- Proxy-voting / voting advisory aggregator (e.g. an ISS-style bloc that pools shareholder votes): similar in that Aura pools many participants' governance rights (veBAL) into a single large voting bloc and directs how a shared resource (BAL emissions) is allocated, much like a proxy advisor concentrates dispersed shareholder votes into influence over corporate decisions.; differs in that Aura's voting power is itself a tradable, incentivized market: votes are bought and sold openly via the Hidden Hand bribe market, holders are financially rewarded for delegating, and the entire process is on-chain and permissionless — unlike regulated, disclosure-bound proxy advisory.