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1. A Token on the Move Before a Landmark Combination
Aerodrome's native token, AERO, has climbed roughly 48% across the past 30 days, a stretch in which both Bitcoin and Ether produced smaller gains. The advance arrives as the decentralized exchange approaches one of the most consequential restructurings in its short history: a union with Velodrome Finance that is scheduled to begin on October 21, 2026, at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time.
Aerodrome is the dominant trading venue on Base, the layer-2 network developed by Coinbase. With only about eleven days separating the market from the merger date, the price action suggests that some traders are building positions ahead of the event rather than waiting for the outcome. That reading is an interpretation of trading behavior, not a confirmed motive, but the timing of the rally and the calendar of the merger line up closely.
Outperforming the two largest digital assets over a month is notable for a decentralized-finance token, since such assets often move with the broader market or lag it during quiet periods. A gain of this size tied to a specific, dated corporate-style event gives the move a clearer narrative than a general rise in risk appetite would.
2. Where the Price and Liquidity Stand
During early October 2026, AERO traded in a band between about $0.68 and $0.84. That range is wide relative to the starting point, which is consistent with a token that has been repricing quickly rather than drifting upward in a steady line.
On the liquidity side, Aerodrome holds approximately $393 million in total value locked on Base. Total value locked, usually shortened to TVL, measures the crypto assets that users have deposited into a protocol's smart contracts, and it is widely used as a rough gauge of how much capital a decentralized application is trusted with. Wider estimates place Aerodrome's TVL between $390 million and $411 million as of early October, nearly all of it on Base. The spread between those numbers reflects differences in how data providers count assets, and no single figure should be treated as definitive.
When Velodrome is added, the combined TVL stood at around $422 million on October 9. The modest size of the gap between the two totals points to an uneven partnership. Aerodrome is the far larger side of the combination, and the arrangement is better described as Aerodrome absorbing Velodrome than as a merger of equals.
3. How the Token Supply Will Be Divided
The allocation of the new token follows the same lopsided logic. Aerodrome stakeholders are slated to receive 94.5% of the new supply, while Velodrome stakeholders will receive the remaining 5.5%. The split mirrors the relative scale of the two protocols and leaves Aerodrome's existing community holding almost all of the combined project.
For holders of the current AERO token, the process is intended to be simple. Existing AERO converts into the new AERO on a one-to-one basis, so a holder's share of the token supply is preserved through the transition. Holders of Velodrome's token are also converted rather than wiped out, receiving the new token in an amount set by an agreed exchange ratio. Because published ratios have differed between sources, holders of the Velodrome token should check the official documentation from the development team before acting.
Token emissions from the legacy contracts stop during the transition. Emissions are the newly issued tokens a protocol distributes as incentives, typically to liquidity providers, and pausing them while the systems are swapped avoids rewards being paid out under two overlapping frameworks.
4. The Mechanics of the Merger
Once the process begins, both exchanges fold into a single new protocol named Aero. The design goal is for it to operate across several EVM-compatible blockchains instead of living mainly on one network. EVM, short for Ethereum Virtual Machine, refers to the software environment that many blockchains share, which allows applications written for one chain to be deployed on others with relatively limited changes.
The development team, Dromos Labs, has described a rollout that spans seven such networks: Base, Ethereum's main network, OP Mainnet, Arbitrum, Circle's Arc, Ink and Robinhood Chain. Spreading across that many venues is intended to let the exchange capture trading activity wherever users and capital are located, instead of depending on the fortunes of a single layer-2 ecosystem.
Velodrome has historically been associated with the Optimism ecosystem, while Aerodrome grew up on Base. Bringing them together therefore joins two communities that already shared a common design heritage but operated on different networks, and it places both under one brand and one token.
5. A New Reward System for Participants
One of the more significant changes concerns how rewards are directed. Today, the exchanges allocate incentives through weekly voting. After the merger, holders of sAERO are expected to receive real-time allocation of rewards, replacing that weekly cycle with a continuous process.
The new setup is also designed to route 100% of protocol revenue to participants. Revenue in this context means the fees that traders pay when they swap tokens on the exchange. Sending the whole amount to those who take part in the system, rather than keeping a portion elsewhere, is a strong statement about how the project intends to share the value it generates.
For token holders the practical effect would be a closer link between the usage of the exchange and the return on holding and staking the token. Whether that link turns out to be as strong in practice depends on trading volumes after the merger, which cannot be known in advance.
6. Widening the Addressable Market
The combined protocol presents a much larger opportunity than either predecessor had alone. It targets an addressable market of more than $63 billion across EVM ecosystems, compared with a previous estimate of about $7 billion. The figure is a projection of the pool of liquidity the project could potentially serve, not a measure of assets it currently holds, so it should be read as an ambition.
The scale of that jump follows from the multi-chain plan. A protocol confined to one or two networks can only compete for the liquidity on those networks, while a protocol deployed on seven can pursue activity across all of them. Whether it can convert that theoretical reach into real deposits is the central question for the project once the launch is complete.
Liquidity matters because it determines how much a trader can buy or sell without moving the price. Deeper pools mean tighter spreads and less slippage, which in turn attracts more volume and more fee income. A larger combined pool could therefore reinforce itself, provided that the capital deposited stays in place after the incentives are reorganized.
Competition in decentralized exchange trading is intense, with established automated market makers already entrenched on Ethereum and on several layer-2 networks. A newcomer to those venues has to attract liquidity providers who have no existing commitment to it, which usually requires strong incentives and a record of reliable execution.
7. From a Base Liquidity Hub to a Multi-Chain Platform
Aerodrome launched on Base in late August 2023 and rose quickly to become one of the network's principal liquidity centers. Much of that growth came from its vote-escrow tokenomics and from the way it used trading fees to reward the participants who supply liquidity.
Vote-escrow is a model in which users lock their tokens for a fixed period in exchange for governance power and a share of rewards. The longer the lock, the greater the influence, which encourages holders to commit for the long term and reduces the amount of freely tradable supply. The approach became a defining feature of both Aerodrome and Velodrome, which is part of why the two projects fit together so naturally.
Base itself has been a growth area for on-chain activity, and Aerodrome's position as its leading exchange has made the protocol a bellwether for the network's decentralized-finance sector.
8. A Timeline That Slipped and Then Firmed Up
The merger was first disclosed in November 2025, with an initial target of the second quarter of 2026. That window passed without the combination taking place, and the schedule was later reset to October 21.
Delays of this kind are common in complex protocol migrations, which involve contract deployments across several networks, audits, and coordination with exchanges and wallet providers. A firm date, announced in advance, gives holders and market participants time to prepare, and it may help explain why interest in the token has picked up in recent weeks.
For an ordinary participant, the practical preparation is straightforward: confirm where tokens are held, check whether they sit in a self-custody wallet or on an exchange, and read the official guidance on the conversion window before the merger begins. Users who stake or lock tokens under the current system should also review how their positions will carry over.
Some centralized exchanges have also set out their own arrangements for supporting the conversion, so holders who keep tokens on those platforms may need to follow the instructions each venue publishes.
9. What to Watch Next
The immediate focus is the October 21 start. Observers will be looking at whether the token conversion proceeds without technical problems, whether the stated TVL holds up after the combination, and whether liquidity begins to appear on the newly supported chains.
Beyond the launch, the central test will be whether the real-time reward model and the full revenue pass-through draw in more capital than the older weekly voting system did. A 48% monthly gain shows that expectations are already elevated, and elevated expectations leave less room for disappointment. Price moves that anticipate an event can also reverse once the event arrives, a pattern familiar across financial markets.
As with any decentralized-finance token, the information here is not investment advice, and the figures cited, particularly those for TVL and price, vary by data provider and change quickly.