Aerodrome (AERO) Price Chart and Market Data

This section details the dual-token architecture, historical funding and fair launch mechanics, supply inflation policies, centralized and decentralized trading venues, airdrop distribution, and known security events.

What is Aerodrome (AERO)?

Aerodrome Finance is the main decentralized exchange (DEX) over on the Base network. They launched it back on August 28, 2023, basically taking the Velodrome V2 stack and tweaking it for lower fees. To give you an idea of its size, it currently handles roughly 60% of all DEX volume on the chain. Ultimately, it’s there to fix the liquidity problem that new tokens usually run into on an L2.

What is the utility of the aero coin?

AERO handles the utility and reward side of things, while veAERO is the governance token. The setup is pretty straightforward: if you lock your AERO for anywhere up to four years, you get veAERO as an NFT. That locked position actually gives you voting rights, plus a full 100% cut of the trading fees and any external bribes. It really just keeps everyone pulling in the same direction.

Who backed the project initially?

Nobody, actually. They did a fair launch with exactly $0 in venture capital, which means we don't have to worry about early VC unlock dumps. Later on, though, some heavy hitters did step in. The Base Ecosystem Fund threw their support behind it in February 2024. Then, around October 2025, Animoca Brands just bought tokens straight off the open market, locking them up for four years to farm those governance yields.

Can the supply keep inflating forever?

Technically, yes, the total supply doesn't have a hard cap. But it's not unchecked inflation. Back in December 2024, they activated the "Aero Fed"—basically a governance system where voters decide every single week if emissions should go up, down, or stay flat. They did put guardrails on it, capping the weekly changes between 0.01% and 1%. So the community is actually driving the monetary policy.

Where do people usually trade aero usd?

You'll get the deepest on-chain liquidity directly on their own DEX, especially if you're swapping AERO/USDC or AERO/WETH. For centralized exchanges, Coinbase is your best bet for a direct fiat on-ramp using USD. Beyond that, the volume is actually pretty spread out—places like Bybit, Gate, Upbit, and Bitget all see a ton of daily action.

Did early users get an airdrop?

They actually did a massive one right at the start. When they minted the initial 500 million tokens, a full 40% of that—so 200 million—went straight to users who were already locking VELO over on Optimism. Interestingly, they dropped them as locked veAERO. The idea was to hand governance power directly to folks who already understood how the whole DeFi ecosystem worked.

Are there major security risks to watch out for?

The main things to watch out for are front-end exploits and standard smart contract bugs. They've had audits from places like Spearbit, sure, but in November 2025, attackers managed a DNS hijack that drained over $1 million. The smart contracts themselves held up fine, actually; the hackers just messed with the website domains. Because of that, honestly, it's best to stick to their ENS mirrors when connecting.