AERO Jumps After Co-Founder Teases ‘Fireworks’ Ahead Of Aerodrome-Velodrome Merger Shy Of Ten Days

(AERO) jumped on Sunday after co-founder Alexander Cutler promised "a lot of fireworks" ahead of the exchange's planned merger with Velodrome, the protocol it was originally built from."I think it's going to be a lot of fireworks," Cutler said during the Digital Asset Summit, where he described the coming relaunch as the protocol's "third DEX OS.” He called it "the most ambitious one we have yet." He further explained that decentralized finance (DeFi) hasn't seen "a big disruption like this... in some time."Aerodrome and Velodrome are currently separate protocols built on the same underlying code, with Velodrome launching first on Optimism before Aerodrome followed on Base, Coinbase’s (COIN) chain.The two are merging into a single protocol called “Aero,” set to go live October 21 across seven chains, including Base, Ethereum (ETH), Arbitrum (ARB), and Robinhood (HOOD) Chain.Two Protocols Becoming OneCutler explained the logic behind chasing that scale. “A DEX is powered by liquidity,” he said. “If you win liquidity, you win more trades, you win more fees, you win more revenue, and then you can inject that value right back into the system.”Aerodrome currently holds about $402 million in total value locked (TVL) and $14.49 billion in decentralized exchange (DEX) trading volume over the past 30 days, according to DeFiLlama data. That’s the scale the upcoming merger will combine with Velodrome’s liquidity under one protocol instead of two. jumped 16% on Sunday before paring gains to trade up 8% over the past 24 hours. The token, however, remains about 55% below the all-time high it hit in December 2024.On Stocktwits, AERO was among the top trending tickers. Retail sentiment around AERO moved from the ‘bullish’ zone to the ‘bearish’ zone, while chatter shifted from ‘extremely high’ to ‘low’ over the past day.No Head Start, Same ResultAerodrome built its dominant position on Base over time, raising the question of whether launching fresh on six new chains would be a different kind of challenge without that same early advantage.Cutler pushed back, saying Aerodrome never had a head start. The exchange wasn't the first to launch on Base either. It started small, like Velodrome once did with just a few million dollars in deposits, and still grew to 60% to 70% of the network's on-chain trading volume over time.“We just showed up with a better product,” he said, pushing back on the idea that early timing explains Aerodrome’s dominance. People chase whichever platform pays liquidity providers the most for the risk they take on, he said, and that calculation resets on every new chain regardless of who got there first.AERO has gained 71% over the past month and is up 144% so far this year.