Aerodrome and Velodrome Merge Into Aero Across Seven Chains

Aerodrome and Velodrome are now one exchange. Aero's homepage now reads "Aero is Here" and calls itself "the unified liquidity layer for all of Ethereum: a cross-chain exchange where anyone can trade, earn, and launch onchain."

If you hold AERO or VELO, two things changed. Your tokens have a conversion rate into the new AERO. Revenue also reaches stakers differently. Aero says it now streams 100% of pool-level exchange revenue to AERO stakers, and the voting rounds that used to decide where rewards went are gone.

The launch follows the terms Aero set out before the switch, which we covered when Aero set the Oct. 21 merger launch and token conversion terms.

How AERO and VELO Convert

The rates are on Aero's upgrade page:

• 1 old AERO becomes 1 new AERO
• 1 VELO becomes 0.044 new AERO
• Aerodrome holders own 94.5% of the new supply, Velodrome holders 5.5%

There is no deadline to upgrade, but the upgrade cannot be undone. Nothing converts automatically. If your tokens sit on a centralized exchange, Aero says each exchange will run its own process and timeline, so the conversion date there depends on that exchange's own notice.

The new AERO contract address has not been confirmed for this article. Aero's upgrade hub said it would be published through official Aero channels, so the address to trust is the one posted there.

Velodrome is not switching off. It will keep supporting trading and liquidity deposits on Celo, Fraxtal, Soneium and Unichain, but without its token economy.

What the Merger Does to AERO Supply

Bringing VELO holders in adds tokens. Total AERO supply rises from about 2 billion to a maximum of about 2.127 billion. Circulating supply rises from about 1.01 billion to a maximum of about 1.07 billion, an increase of roughly 6%.

Aero expects realized annual inflation of about 12%, with a ceiling of 20% at launch. Those are Aero's projections, not observed figures yet.

On the economics page, staked sAERO made up 23.58% of supply. sAERO is the staked form of the token that now earns the exchange revenue.

Real-Time Allocation Replaces Voting

The old Aerodrome and Velodrome model ran in weekly epochs. Holders locked tokens and voted on which pools received emissions, and fees were paid out after each round.

Aero drops that. Its economics page says "there is no voting, no epochs, and no delay between revenue accrued and revenue distributed to staked participants." Stakers allocate in real time instead.

There is one limit at launch. Each sAERO position has a 47-hour cooldown between allocation changes, so you cannot shift your allocation from pool to pool every hour.

Seven Chains Listed, but Base Holds Almost All of It

Aero lists seven networks on its economics page. The dollar figures it shows per chain, pulled at 07:25 UTC on 22 October, are uneven. The page does not label the metric.

Base, where Aerodrome already ran, accounts for about 88% of the combined $578 million. OP Mainnet, Velodrome's old home, is a distant second. The four new chains together show less than $2.72 million, and three of them show a few thousand dollars or less.

So the merger is live on paper across seven chains, but in practice it is still a Base exchange with an OP Mainnet arm. The figures to watch are whether the Ethereum, Arbitrum, Robinhood Chain and Arc numbers move off their starting levels, and how quickly VELO holders and exchanges complete the upgrade. No public data on conversion progress was available yet.