Aura
Liquidity · Vaults · 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.
Boosted Balancer yield and veBAL aggregation.
AURA price
$0.0119
-0.9% 24h
Latest data · 15 min delay
Research
Components, facts, FAQ, timeline, and tokenomics in one place
Main components (4)
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.
Differentiator
The dominant veBAL aggregator, steering Balancer emissions and underpinning the Balancer bribe market.
Organizational structure
Units & roles
- Governance
Aura DAO / vlAURA governance
Aura operates through community governance rather than a traditional corporate team. AURA is vote-locked into vlAURA, and Aura Improvement Proposals (AIPs) are decided by vlAURA holders. Early governance (first 16 weeks) allocated roughly 2% of supply across proposals AIP-1, 3, 5, 6 and 15.
- Core contributors / development
Aura contributors
Anonymous/pseudonymous core contributors received a 10% supply allocation on a 2-year vesting schedule. No tokens were distributed to insiders or VCs outside of protocol contributors.
Similarity to traditional finance products
How Aura maps onto established TradFi structures, and where it diverges.
| TradFi product | Similarity to Aura | Key differences |
|---|---|---|
| Proxy-voting / voting advisory aggregator (e.g. an ISS-style bloc that pools shareholder votes) | 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. | 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. |
Data sources
- Aura Finance docs — Security (audits & bug bounty)
- Aura Finance docs — $AURA Distribution / tokenomics
- Aura Finance docs — Frequently Asked Questions (auraBAL, vlAURA, Hidden Hand)
- Aura Finance blog — LBP recap (launch)
- Balancer Protocol — The Recent Vulnerability Disclosure (Aug 2023)
- Gate Learn — What Is Aura Finance (TGE date, model)
- Halborn — Aura Finance audit reports