While much of the industry’s attention over the past year has been focused on stablecoins, tokenized treasures, and institutional onramps, the team behind Velodrome and Aerodrome say the real power struggle in cryptocurrencies is playing out elsewhere: on decentralized exchanges (DEX).
Alex Cutler, CEO of Dromos Labs, the lead developer behind Aerodrome and Velodrome, described the exchange layer as “the second most important layer” of the chain economy in an interview with CoinDesk.
That vision is now shaping the company’s most aggressive move yet. Dromos Labs is preparing to introduce Aero, a unified DEX that will merge its existing Aerodrome and Velodrome protocols into a single operating system and directly target traditional companies like Uniswap and Curve.
The launch, expected in the second quarter of 2026, will also mark Dromos Labs’ expansion into the Ethereum mainnet, putting the company in head-to-head competition with the largest and most entrenched DEXs on the market.
Aerodrome currently captures a significant portion of trading activity on Coinbase’s Base network, while Velodrome plays a similar role on Optimism’s Superchain. Aerodrome currently has nearly $500 million in total value locked (TVL) and surpassed $1 billion in December 2025, when it accounted for roughly a quarter of Base’s total TVL, a level of dominance that Dromos Labs says is repeatable on the mainnet.
While decentralized finance may no longer dominate daily cryptocurrency headlines, Cutler maintains that it reflects consolidation, not stagnation. In his view, almost all narratives driving cryptocurrency adoption, from institutional currencies to memecoins, still rely on the same fundamental infrastructure.
“You can’t have a global currency chain without great liquidity and the ability to exchange it freely, across networks, at high speeds and low cost,” he said. “The two essential pillars of the chain economy are the chain layer and the exchange layer, and every trend benefits those two.”
Dromos Labs’ strategy is based on the belief that exchanges, rather than blockchains, will become the primary fulcrums for value as more assets move on-chain. That thesis informs both Aero’s design and the company’s increasingly explicit positioning against Uniswap, the largest operator in the sector.
“One of the biggest stories next year will be: who owns the exchange layer?” Cutler said.
The competitive contrast sharpened earlier this year when Uniswap governance presented a “UNification proposal” aimed at allowing protocol revenues to flow to UNI token holders. Cutler publicly criticized the move, arguing that it weakens Uniswap’s relationship with liquidity providers, the core engine of any DEX.
“They are taking from liquidity providers to give to token holders, and that means paying less for the most essential service in DeFi,” he said.
(The UNification proposal is Uniswap’s plan to simplify the operation of the protocol and begin sharing trading fees with UNI token holders, a move that would change who gets paid within the exchange.)
Uniswap did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
Until now, Dromos Labs’ competitiveness has largely been limited to Layer 2 networks. Aero’s Ethereum mainnet launch aims to change that dynamic and test whether its model can scale against Uniswap and Curve on its home turf.
While Aero is designed to serve retail users seeking liquidity over networks, Dromos Labs is also being built with institutional adoption in mind.
“Institutions will use DeFi rails, but those rails have to be institutional grade, that is non-negotiable,” Cutler said. “There can be no layers of human dependency. Everything has to be verifiable.”
That includes on-chain automation, reduced operational risk, and compliance tools built directly into the protocol level, features Cutler sees as essential as capital markets increasingly move on-chain.
Read more: Leading base airfield DEX merges with Aero in major overhaul
