Aerodrome’s onchain dominance for BTC-ETH trading rises to 56%

A decentralized exchange built on Coinbase’s Base network now controls the majority of onchain BTC trading. Aerodrome Finance grew its share of BTC-ETH spot volume from 35% to 56% over the third quarter, a gain that would be notable for any platform and is particularly striking for one that only launched in 2023. Aerodrome’s cumulative trading volume has now crossed $400 billion since inception. Daily volumes on the platform have averaged above $1 billion, with a single-day peak of $1.24 billion recorded in recent months. The engine behind this growth is the veAERO governance model. Users who lock AERO tokens receive veAERO, which grants voting rights over which liquidity pools receive emissions. That creates a self-reinforcing loop: liquidity providers chase pools with high emission votes, which deepens liquidity, which attracts more volume, which generates more fees to reward lockers. In July, Aerodrome captured 54% of BTC-USD spot trading volume across all EVM-compatible DEXs. Every other EVM DEX combined accounted for less. The protocol now controls an estimated 50% to 65% of Base’s overall DEX market, leading not just in BTC pairs but also in foreign exchange-adjacent pairs wh...