Aerodrome review

Where Base liquidity sits

Deployed in 2023 from the audited Velodrome codebase, Aerodrome quickly became the venue with the largest reserves on Base, and it has no exploit on record. Execution costs are low because the chain is cheap, and fee tiers are set per pool between roughly 0.01% and 0.3%.

Emissions decide everything, in public

Weekly gauge votes by veAERO holders direct where emissions go, and liquidity follows them. Every part of that is visible on-chain, which is the honest version of a model that elsewhere has been run opaquely. It also means the depth in any given pool is a function of this week's vote as much as of organic demand.

The open question

ve(3,3) designs have a mixed record across previous implementations, most of which unwound when growth stopped and emissions could no longer buy liquidity. Aerodrome has not faced that test yet. Core pools are immutable; a team multisig retains permissions over peripheral contracts.

Practical use

For swapping on Base it is the default and usually the best price available on the chain. For liquidity provision, read the current gauge vote before committing: your yield is a function of an emission allocation that is re-decided weekly, and a pool that pays well this week may not next.

What we are watching

Whether fee revenue grows into a share of the liquidity currently held by emissions. That transition is what separates a venue with durable depth from one renting it, and it is the single number that will move this score in either direction.