Aero, the exchange formed by merging the Aerodrome and Velodrome decentralized exchanges (DEXs), went live at 00:00 UTC on Thursday on Base, Ethereum, OP Mainnet, Arc, Ink, Arbitrum and Robinhood Chain.

“Aero is here. Get on board,” the team posted on X at 01:01 UTC, an hour after the upgrade portals opened on aerodrome.finance and velodrome.finance. The terms are the ones Aero set the terms on 10 Oct: one AERO becomes one new AERO, and one VELO becomes 0.044 AERO.

The rundown

  • What changed: Aerodrome and Velodrome emissions ended at launch and new AERO rewards started streaming, according to Aero’s launch hub. Liquid AERO and VELO can be upgraded now; locked veNFTs that voted in the final epoch could upgrade from 01:00 UTC. Locked positions become sAERO, or staked AERO, which steers rewards to pools on any of the seven chains. Aero says it raised no venture money and sold no tokens, and that all exchange revenue goes to sAERO holders.
  • Why it matters: This is the first time one token economy runs a DEX across seven chains at once. The old apps stay up to handle upgrades, but their gauges are switched off, so liquidity providers left in legacy pools no longer earn the old rewards. Velodrome keeps trading on Celo, Fraxtal, Soneium and Unichain without a token economy. Aero’s automated Autopilot allocation starts at 16:00 UTC today.
  • Where it breaks: The upgrade is one-way and nothing converts automatically. Holders need a little ETH for gas, on Base for Aerodrome and on OP Mainnet for Velodrome. Once an sAERO holder picks pools, the next change has to wait 47 hours, for now. Launch days also bring fake portals; it only takes a fake link from an official-looking account. Aero says the official contract addresses are in its public GitHub repositories and docs, so check there rather than in replies. Aero cites audits by Sherlock and ChainSecurity across five engagements plus a three-week contest, and a Sherlock bug bounty live from launch day. Audits lower risk; they do not remove it.
  • By the numbers: Legacy Aerodrome pools (Slipstream, V1 and Ignition) held $321.3 million in total value locked (TVL) at 03:52 UTC, and legacy Velodrome pools $28.5 million, according to DefiLlama. DefiLlama’s new Aero listing showed $3.1 million, all of it on Arc, so it does not yet capture the new pools on Base. AERO traded at $0.823 and VELO at $0.0360 on CoinGecko, down 4.2% and 3.9% in 24 hours. At 0.044, a VELO is worth about $0.0362 in AERO, so VELO trades about 0.5% below its conversion value, by our arithmetic.

The total supply of the new AERO can rise from about 2 billion to a maximum of about 2.127 billion as both tokens upgrade, the hub says. Tokens that are never upgraded never reach circulation.

Post by @aeroxyz on X: https://x.com/aeroxyz/status/2113073218374492617

This article is for information only and is not investment advice.