Holy sh*t. According to @DefiLlama, Aerodrome pays out $109M a year to its token holders, while the entire protocol is only valued at $481M. That's more than a fifth of the market cap landing in holders' pockets every single year. And they're growing fast. When Coinbase put Nvidia, Apple, Meta and Alphabet shares onchain, Aerodrome took roughly 25% of that market inside a week, now handling more than half of all trading volume on Base. But of course, there's a catch. And it's one you need to be careful of if you're looking to buy and hold. Blockworks counted $15.23M going to holders in Q2, while the dollar value of new $AERO issued over that same stretch often came in higher, meaning even though the protocol is earning nine figures a year, it can still shrink your slice while you hold it. Locking is what fixes that. Protocol revenue goes to $veAERO, meaning anyone sitting on loose $AERO tokens is essentially handing their cut to stakers (which is why roughly half the supply is locked at an average of 3.8 years). And none of this ends on Base. Aerodrome is now expanding onto Ethereum mainnet and Circle's new Arc chain, where it'll be going after the liquidity that currently lives on Uniswap. Two things could mess up this trade: 1. Aerodrome could keep issuing more new $AERO each quarter than it pays out, which leaves lockers collecting a token that's being diluted faster than the protocol can pay them. 2. Uniswap could take the liquidity for the next wave of tokenized stocks, causing that $60M a year to stop growing. Either way, our PRO analyst @BitcoinJesusETH thinks $AERO is a buy, and has started to build a position. This is the same guy that called $SKY, $SOL, and $ETH, all before their recent 30%+ runs. Don't miss his next entry, try Milk Road PRO for $1. Link below.