Aerodrome Finance, the central liquidity venue on Base, and Velodrome, its counterpart on OP Mainnet, upgrade together into a single cross-chain exchange called Aero on October 21 at 8:00 p.m. EDT (October 22 at 00:00 UTC). The change is a migration of tokens and voting positions rather than a listing or airdrop, and the practical stakes for anyone holding AERO or VELO come down to a few mechanics that are easy to misread.
How the conversion is priced
AERO converts one-for-one into the new AERO. VELO converts at 0.044 new AERO per token. That ratio is not an exchange opinion: it falls out of how the new supply is divided. Aerodrome holders receive 94.5% of the new AERO supply and Velodrome holders receive 5.5%. Spreading Velodrome’s share of about 117 million AERO across a projected 2.66 billion VELO produces the 0.044 rate.
The figure depends on the supply actually present at launch, so the project treats both the rate and the total as approximate. The expected total supply grows from roughly 2 billion to a maximum of about 2.127 billion new AERO, and any token that is never upgraded will not enter circulation.
What the upgrade does and does not do
The merger folds two competing venues into one exchange running on seven networks: Base, Ethereum mainnet, OP Mainnet, Arc, Ink, Robinhood Chain, and Arbitrum. Locked voting positions change too. The veAERO and veVELO tokens that steer weekly emissions become sAERO, a staked token that directs AERO Rewards to liquidity pools and earns exchange revenue as it accrues. Each allocation carries a 47-hour cooldown at launch, and lock duration carries over: remaining time is rounded up to the next full week, while a permanent lock becomes a maximum-duration stake.
What the upgrade does not do is happen by itself. Nothing converts automatically. Self-custody holders must move through the upgrade portals at aerodrome.finance and velodrome.finance, which open at launch. A small amount of ETH covers network fees — ETH on Base for Aerodrome and ETH on OP Mainnet for Velodrome — and xVELO held on another chain must be bridged back to OP Mainnet first. veNFT holders who voted in the final epoch can upgrade starting one hour after launch, at 01:00 UTC, so final rewards and rebases can be claimed first.
Where the real risk sits
The new AERO contract address is published only through official Aero channels on launch day, and the migration is irreversible. Approving a transaction against an address copied from an unfamiliar source is the one point where a routine migration can turn into a loss. There is no deadline to upgrade, so no one is forced to act in a rush, and each exchange coordinates its own process and timeline rather than a single shared one.
Treat the merger as a custody and timing decision, not a price signal. The conversion is a fixed ratio rather than a market view, and AERO’s value after launch will be set by liquidity, usage, and emissions — none of which the swap ratio predicts.
Adapted from Aerodrome and Velodrome Merge Into Aero on Oct. 21: VELO to AERO Swap Ratio and What Holders Must Do.