Native USDT on NEAR and Its implications On The Rainbow Bridge & Aurora
Everything you need to know about NEAR USDT's onboarding on Aurora & the Rainbow Bridge
With the close link between Aurora and both NEAR and Ethereum via the Rainbow Bridge, two similar USDT (by symbol) would have emerged: USDT bridged from Ethereum over the Rainbow bridge (bridged USDT onwards) and native USDT on NEAR.
Great user experience is a core value of Aurora. For this reason, and to avoid any user confusion, Aurora labs has chosen to update bridged USDT's metadata. Particularly, the symbol of the token will be changed from USDT to USDT.e. This update would be performed on both NEAR and Aurora and shall take place on Friday the 16th of September 2022.
USDT.e will be, from now on, the symbol chosen to denote ‘bridged USDT’. No action is required if you currently are holding USDT bridged from Ethereum, as previously bridged USDT will be kept in all wallets, just with a symbol renamed to USDT.e.
There will be no change in contract address, nor in $ value. Also, the change of the metadata won't influence any existing AMM pools that includes bridged USDT.
Regarding bridging actions, it simply means that:
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One can bridge Aurora USDT.e to Ethereum and get USDT on Ethereum (whether or not those USDT (Ethereum) tokens were bridged from Ethereum to Aurora before this update)
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One can bridge Aurora USDT.e to NEAR and get USDT.e and vice versa
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One can bridge NEAR USDT.e to Ethereum and get USDT on Ethereum
Please also note that:
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"USDT" on NEAR & Aurora now denotes the official NEAR-native USDT token
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The upcoming Native NEAR USDT will be bridgeable to Aurora.
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NEAR-native USDT can't be bridged over the Rainbow Bridge to Ethereum - you have to swap it to USDT.e first, and then bridge USDT.e to Ethereum.
How and where to swap USDT.e to NEAR-native USDT and vice versa?
We expect that both NEAR and Aurora communities will create stableswap pools between USDT.e and USDT on both Aurora and NEAR networks once USDT is officially deployed. It is fair to anticipate that such pools would be created on Trisolaris (https://www.trisolaris.io/#/swap) and Ref Finance (https://app.ref.finance/). There's no limitations for other DEXes to implement such pools.
Note to the DEVs building on Aurora & NEAR
We recommend all wallet and project builders in both the NEAR and Aurora ecosystems to double-check how they are showing information to their users: getting it directly from the metadata OR using their own repos of the metadata (for example through token lists). In the latter case, said projects and wallets should update the metadata to match the new metadata of USDT.e.
A clear and easy-to-understand communication with your users is also required. Announcement bars, pop-ups, and so on, are recommended for (at least) the first month, to allow periodic users to be aware of the update.