It is comforting to know that while activity on HyperVM is cooling for now (along with $HYPE price), my preferred exchange, @RamsesExchange - is the least dilutive of any ve33 in the ecosystem. Study $RAM burns. Study effective emission controls.

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.

Looking for expert feedback and analysis on a potential design that integrates ve3,3 into perps. Will provide compensation for the right individual/entity. Must deeply understand vetokenomics and actively trade perps. A rare combination... Who should we speak with?

I was trawling through Discord the other day when I saw a message that reminded me that @giga_dex's points program is 50% complete, which is cool! With TGE coming up at the end of August I started doing some maths for myself, but maybe not on the side you'd expect me to focus on. GigaDex is an optimisation on the Ve3,3 model popularised by @AerodromeFi over on @base. Rather than directing emissions directly to LP's, the V3,3 model encouraged token holders to step in and play an active role, locking their own tokens to earn voting rights which they were then able to use to direct future emissions towards the LP's of their choice. Giga saw this model and went, hey, its great, but we think we can optimise further. They started with the same basic framework, token holders earn in line with protocol success, but they cut out a lot of the inherent complication of the voting system by directing emissions themselves. This means that token holders will earn ALL protocol fees, with a model that allows you to stake, select your reward token and walk away. This is the bit I was interested in. I absolutely love models where fees go direct to holders, so I decided to run the numbers at TGE. The entire supply of GIGA is being printed at TGE, which makes it a bit easier to track everything, we're starting with 1 Billion tokens. What I'm interested in is the percentage of those tokens that're starting off as veGIGA, the locked version of the token. This is where all the fees will accrue. Working through the tokenomics model, Initially the veGIGA Machine, the $ROOT protocol allocation, the Launch Partner Allocation and the Community Airdrop will be locked as veGIGA at launch, adding up to 34.5% of total supply initially locked. In addition, the Treasury, Fair Launch Allocation and LP Support have potential to be allocated as veGIGA, adding a potential further 24% of supply locked at launch. So, we're starting with 34.5-58.5% of total supply earning a portion of protocol fees on day 1. The protocol earns 20% on Gauged (currently points earning, in future GIGA emission earning) pools, and 10% on non-gauged pools. GIGA is averaging ~$2000/day in total fees, so lets assume that the majority of that is gauged volume given points are great, meaning we're looking at ~$325/day in fees going into stakers pockets in the form of their choice. This might not sound too crazy, but lets contrast that with @Uniswap, who currently own the majority of volume on @RobinhoodCrypto. It's not a direct analogue as the fee split is a little different, but on average Uniswap is bringing in ~$130k in protocol revenue a day. If Giga can establish themselves to even a third of that daily rev things get pretty nice pretty fast for stakers. At 40k fees a day holding a decent percent of veGIGA could be pretty fun for your wallet, especially with as low as 35% of supply staked initially. With a pretty substantial amount of variance in the amount of supply staked on Day 1 it's a pretty interesting conundrum. Do you think Giga has potential to hit Uniswap numbers? Would you be happy if it chilled and paid you out smaller chunks of USDG over time? Either way, GIGA is an interesting concept and I'll be keeping an eye on them to see how it all pans out. Thanks for reading!