Original article by: Vishal Chawla

Original title: Aerodrome tops $1 billion in deposits, dominating DeFi on Base

Original source: The Block

Compiled by: Koala, Mars Finance

Aerodrome Finance has injected more than $1 billion in deposits into Base, accounting for more than half of the network’s TVL.

Base, the Layer 2 Ethereum network incubated by Coinbase, saw its total locked value (or user deposits) surge to $2 billion, more than five times the amount deposited on the network so far this year.

Decentralized exchange Aerodrome accounts for nearly half of Base’s TVL, contributing more than $1 billion in deposits, up from $120 million in January. Its deposits account for more than 50% of the total TVL in the DeFi ecosystem on Base.

DeFiLlama data shows that Aerodrome is the largest decentralized exchange protocol on Base, surpassing DeFi giants such as Uniswap and Aave on the network not only in terms of total locked value, but also in terms of transaction volume and fees.

By analyzing Aerodrome’s on-chain exchange volume across all chains, The Block’s data dashboard shows that it processed $9.02 billion last month, which is comparable to Solana DEXs such as Orca and Raydium, which both have volumes between $9 billion and $10 billion. However, Aerodrome’s volume is still lower than other exchanges such as Uniswap (on the Ethereum mainnet) and PancakeSwap (on the BNB chain).

The development team of Velodrome Finance (a decentralized exchange on OP Mainnet) first launched Aerodrome as a forked version on Base in September 2023.

Since then, it has facilitated a large number of on-chain exchanges on the Base network. This approach is similar to its strategy with Velodrome on OP Mainnet, which involves using a set of decentralized financial incentives and voting escrow governance.

The system incentivizes users to stake AERO governance tokens for veAERO, another token that entitles holders to a share of protocol fees proportional to their votes.

Velodrome and Aerodrome are forks of Solidly, utilizing Andre Cronje's ve (3,3) design.