Aerodrome rallies 48% in four weeks, outpacing Bitcoin and Ether

Aerodrome’s AERO token has climbed approximately 48% over the past 30 days. The move puts it ahead of both Bitcoin and Ether over the same stretch, according to The Defiant.

The timing is not subtle. Aerodrome, the leading decentralized exchange on Coinbase’s Base layer-2 network, is roughly two weeks away from merging with Velodrome Finance. Traders appear to be positioning early.

The numbers behind the run

AERO has traded between $0.68 and $0.84 in early October 2026.

Aerodrome holds about $393 million in total value locked on Base. Total value locked, or TVL, is the pool of crypto deposited into a protocol’s smart contracts.

Broader estimates place Aerodrome’s TVL between $390 million and $411 million as of early October 2026. Most of that sits on Base.

Add Velodrome to the picture and the combined TVL comes to around $422 million as of October 9, 2026. This is less a merger of equals and more Aerodrome absorbing a sibling.

The token split makes that hierarchy explicit. Of the new supply, 94.5% goes to Aerodrome stakeholders. Velodrome stakeholders receive the remaining 5.5%.

How the merger works

The combination is scheduled to begin on October 21, 2026, at 8:00 p.m. ET. The two exchanges will fold into a single new protocol called Aero, designed to run across multiple Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chains.

Token holders get converted, not wiped out. Existing AERO swaps into the new AERO at a 1:1 ratio. VELO holders receive about 0.044 new AERO per token.

Legacy token emissions will stop as part of the transition.

Post-merger, holders of sAERO will see real-time reward allocation replace the current weekly voting system. The new setup directs 100% of protocol revenue to participants.

The pitch for the merger is market reach. The combined protocol targets a broader addressable market worth over $63 billion across EVM ecosystems, up from the previous $7 billion.

How we got here

Aerodrome launched on Base in late August 2023. It quickly became a top liquidity hub on the network, driven by vote-escrowed tokenomics and its fee mechanisms.

Vote-escrow is a design where users lock tokens for a period of time in exchange for governance power and a share of rewards. The longer the lock, the bigger the say.

The merger was first revealed in November 2025. It was initially targeted for Q2 2026. That window came and went, and the date has since landed on October 21.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Vivian Nguyen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.