Leading Base DEX Aerodrome Merges Into Aero in Major Overhaul

Dromos Labs, the core developer behind decentralized exchanges (DEX) Aerodrome on Base and Velodrome on Optimism, announced a major overhaul of its decentralized exchange infrastructure on Wednesday with the launch of Aero, a unified trading system that will replace and merge its existing platforms across both networks, as well as expand to other Ethereum chains.

Aerodrome is currently the leading exchange on Base by volume and fees, and with Aero’s expansion to Ethereum mainnet in the second quarter of 2026, as well as Circle’s Arc, Dromos Labs aims to position the platform as a central liquidity hub for the broader ecosystem.

Aero, which is set to bring faster and cheaper fees onchain, will focus on Base as its central hub, while extending liquidity and trading capabilities to other chains.

“Just as the world came online, it is now coming onchain. Aero is at the vanguard of a financial system better, faster, and cheaper than the incumbent,” said Alexander Cutler, the CEO of Dromos Labs.

Alongside Aero, the company revealed METADEX03, the latest version of its MetaDEX operating system. The upgrade introduces a dual-engine architecture designed to reduce value leakage and route all protocol revenue back to users. One standout feature of the upgrade is Slipstream V3, which embeds an Maximimal Extractable Value (MEV) auction directly into the AMM, allowing the protocol to internalize value typically captured by arbitrage bots.

The company said Aero and METADEX03 will push DeFi past traditional finance in efficiency and accessibility as more institutions and retail users move onchain.

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