What is Aerodrome Finance and what does it do?

Aerodrome Finance is a decentralized exchange on Base, the Ethereum layer 2 network. Blockworks describes it as the dominant DEX on Base, launched in August 2023 by Dromos Labs. People use it to swap tokens and to earn rewards by supplying liquidity.

What does Aerodrome crypto do?

Aerodrome runs two kinds of pools. Basic pools handle stable pairs and volatile pairs using a constant-product design. Slipstream pools use concentrated liquidity, where providers pick a price range, and Blockworks says this module closely follows Uniswap V3.

What sets Aerodrome apart is how it pays for liquidity. New AERO tokens are emitted each epoch, and token holders vote on which pools receive them. Projects that want deep liquidity for their own token often offer extra incentives, sometimes called bribes, to attract those votes.

What is the Aerodrome token and veAERO?

AERO is the exchange's token. Under the ve(3,3) model first used by Velodrome, holders can lock AERO for up to four years to receive veAERO, which is held as an NFT. veAERO gives voting power over where AERO emissions go.

Trading fees from staked liquidity are routed to the veAERO holders who voted for that pool, according to Blockworks. Liquidity providers who stake in a pool earn AERO emissions instead of fees, while unstaked positions keep their trading fees directly. The design aims to link voters, liquidity providers and projects through one reward loop.

What is Aero, and how does it relate to Velodrome?

Velodrome is the sister exchange on Optimism, run by the same team. On November 12, 2025, Dromos Labs announced that the two would merge into one exchange called Aero, AMBCrypto reported, with AERO holders receiving 94.5% of the new token supply and VELO holders 5.5%.

According to the official Aero upgrade hub, Aero is scheduled to go live on October 21, 2026 at 8:00 PM EDT on Base, Ethereum mainnet, OP Mainnet, Arc, Ink, Robinhood Chain and Arbitrum. Key terms, as of October 17, 2026:

• 1 AERO becomes 1 new AERO, and 1 VELO becomes about 0.044 new AERO.
• veAERO and veVELO positions upgrade to a new staked form called sAERO, keeping their remaining lock time.
• Nothing converts automatically. Holders upgrade through the official portal, and emissions on the old Aerodrome and Velodrome pools stop at launch.

Crypto Briefing reported that Coinbase plans to convert AERO and VELO held on its platform between November 2 and 4, 2026. Because fake upgrade sites can appear around migrations, it helps to read our guide to token migrations and check links against official channels. Dates and ratios may still be adjusted by the team.