Royals DeFi Investigation - @ConvexFinance / $CVX - Part 1 - The liquidity management and governance powerhouse behind Curve, Frax, f(x) & Resupply Convex started in May 2021, right after the DeFi summer of 2020, with its core mission to find a way to make @Curvefinance easier and more efficient to use, and it quickly ended up becoming one of DeFi’s most impactful governance and incentive layers across some of the most influential protocols, then and now. At a basic level, Convex now solves simple but very important needs, as it creates very simplified access to the ve locking engines of Curve, @fraxfinance, and also provides improved earning opportunities for the assets of the mentioned ones, but as well @protocol_fx & @ResupplyFi. Let’s look closer at the setup of Convex in relation to Curve & how it looks in practice. Curve, a decentralized exchange, known for stable swaps with deep liquidity, is where users deposit liquidity into pools and earn rewards, Convex builds directly on top of it, to help users earn boosted rewards on their LP positions without having to lock CRV themselves for up to four years. Like mentioned, originally to receive these boosted rewards, you would have had to lock CRV yourself, but with about 53% of all veCRV, Convex holds the largest share of locked Curve existing. So instead of locking, users can deposit their supported LP tokens through Convex and receive for example $CVX as rewards (their own ecosystem token) for it. Similar setups also exist for Fraxfinance’s ecosystem token $FRAX (prev. $FXS) and the token from f(x), $FXN. The locked token supply of Convex across these ecosystems looks like this currently: - 29.6M veFXS - 52.15% of total - 158.3k veFXN - 52.66% of total - 5M $RSUP - 19.51% of total On top of that, it gives users liquid wrappers like cvxCRV, cvxFXS, and cvxFXN, which represent the underlying locked positions while staying liquid and usable across DeFi. Now that we’ve clarified the economic reason to use Convex for exposure to Curve, Frax, or f(x), there is another important layer to understand, in these ecosystems, as governance rights are tied to their locked tokens, so locking them translates into voting power. Means, when users choose to route their position through Convex, they are not only optimizing yield, but also effectively giving up direct governance control for as long as they use that setup. Convex then aggregates that governance power and has a strong incentive to use it in a way that supports the broader ecosystem, because the stronger those protocols are, the more valuable the entire Convex setup becomes. The way this works for users is clean, especially if you are an LP, you deposit your Curve, Frax, or f(x) position into Convex and let the protocol handle the boost, the emissions routing, and the reward flow. The rewards are partly distributed in CVX & if you hold them, you can also lock CVX for 16 weeks through vlCVX and use that voting power for gauge weights, DAO proposals, and fee and bribe share inside the protocol. Overall CVX has a fixed maximum supply of 100 million tokens, and new CVX is minted proportionally when CRV rewards are claimed through Convex itself. That is why Convex has operated at meaningful scale since the start, with roughly $585.9M in TVL, $222.1M in cumulative revenue, about $10.6M in treasury assets today & because of this massive importance when it comes to these mentioned protocols, that’s also the reason, Convex was also deeply tied into the Curve Wars back then. Personally, I like Convex because it solved one of DeFi’s most important capital efficiency problems & scaled that solution into an incentive machine that still rules several of the most relevant ve token systems in DeFi. What do you think, is Convex still one of the most important liquidity management hubs in DeFi, or are some voices right when they say the golden days of Convex are already over? Convex.

Royals DeFi Investigation - @AerodromeFi / $AERO in 2026 - The Protocol That's Printing Cash Flow Regardless If you caught my video on Aerodrome earlier this year, where I spoke about some core fundamentals like liquidity providing on the platform, I want to take it a step further today & keep it very similar to my recent @pendle_fi recap, as this is also an analysis of what actually happened in Q1 and Q2 2026 for the leading DEX on Base. The year started weak on paper. Q1 2026 came in at around $18.3M in protocol revenue, down 46% from $34.5M in Q4 2025 & Q2 followed with ~$16.1M, a further 12% decline quarter over quarter. While that looks significant, it definitely reflects broader market conditions rather than structural weakness within the protocol. TVL followed a similar trend, sitting around $345M in Q1 and declining to roughly $310M in Q2, but besides that, activity remained strong, with monthly volumes consistently above $9B showing that underlying demand for liquidity on Base held up most of the time. On the token side of things, AERO is currently trading around $0.51 with a market cap of $484M, but price action across Q1 and Q2 saw two notable drawdowns. The first occurred at the start of the year, the second in early June, where AERO dropped from around ~$0.45 to ~$0.30. Both moves looked very similar & were followed by relatively fast recoveries, with the token pushing back toward $0.50, which is roughly where it trades now. Structurally, Aerodrome’s position has not weakened, more the opposite, as it continues to dominate Base DEX liquidity in a way comparable to how durable Uniswap controlled Ethereum mainnet in earlier cycles. What is changing, are slowly the tokenomics & as well the expansion of the system is an ongoing priority. Especially the @VelodromeFi merge, which was announced in late 2025, seems to be part of this upcoming change. For now the legacy ve33 model remains fully active for now, with AERO locking for veAERO, weekly gauge voting, emissions distributed accordingly, with fee accrual and bribes continuing to flow to veAERO holders, but the already announced switch to sAERO, in relation to the merge with Velodrome, could very likely be implemented this month, so definitely something to look forward to & be excited about. On top of that, more than 190M AERO, which is more than 20% of the circulating supply, has already been bought back and locked through programs funded by protocol revenue such as the Public Goods Fund, Flight School, and Relay, which introduces not only a strong narrative for potential future investors, but as well establishes consistent mechanisms that remove supply directly from the market. The result is a shift away from purely emission driven tokenomics toward supply reduction backed by real cash flow, a narrative which @HyperliquidX definitely made big in the last months. Looking ahead to Q3 and Q4, there are some things which could push the needle much further for Aerodrome, as the mainnet expansion, which will test cross chain liquidity at scale, particularly with MEV internalization live and also very much the upcoming expansions to Circle’s Arc environment puts Aerodrome again into direct competition with Uniswap, that’s why I am personally excited to see how this will play out for them. But as mentioned, most importantly is the adoption of sAERO imo, which will determine whether the token fully transitions into a more active instrument or if the veAERO will be more sustainable in the end. As a frequent user of the Base chain, it is even more exciting to see, Aerodrome expanding beyond base & positioning itself as a unified liquidity layer across major chains, with clear mechanisms to capture and retain value at the token level. What do you think & are you bullish on $AERO further going into the future? Aerodrome.