While much of the industry’s attention over the past year has been on stablecoins, tokenized Treasuries, and institutional on-ramps, the teams behind Velodrome and Aerodrome say the real power struggle in the cryptocurrency space is unfolding elsewhere: decentralized exchanges (DEXs).
Alex Cutler, CEO of Dromos Labs, the main development company behind Aerodrome and Velodrome, described the exchange layer as the “second most important layer” of the on-chain economy in an interview with CoinDesk.
That view is shaping the company’s most aggressive move yet. Dromos Labs is preparing to launch Aero, a unified DEX that will merge its existing Aerodrome and Velodrome protocols under a single operating system and directly target existing protocols such as Uniswap and Curve.
The launch, scheduled for Q2 2026, also marks Dromos Labs’ expansion into the Ethereum mainnet, putting the company in head-to-head competition with the largest and most established DEXs on the market.
Aerodrome currently accounts for a large share of trading activity on the Coinbase Base network, while Velodrome plays a similar role on Optimism’s superchain. Aerodrome currently has a total value locked (TVL) of nearly $500 million, and exceeded $1 billion in December 2025, when it accounted for approximately a quarter of Base’s total TVL. Dromos Labs said this dominance is repeatable on the mainnet.
While decentralized finance may no longer dominate daily cryptocurrency headlines, Cutler believes it reflects consolidation, not stagnation. In his view, nearly all narratives driving cryptocurrency adoption, from institutional FX to meme coins, still rely on the same infrastructure.
“You can’t have a global FX chain without deep liquidity and the ability to convert freely across the network quickly and cheaply,” he said. “Two important pillars of the on-chain economy are the chain layer and the exchange layer – every trend favors these two layers.”
Dromos Labs’ strategy is rooted in the belief that as more assets move on-chain, exchanges, rather than the blockchain, will become the primary foothold for value. The paper informed Aero’s design and the company’s increasingly clear positioning against Uniswap, the industry’s largest incumbent.
“One of the biggest stories next year will be: Who owns the switching layer?” Cutler said.
The competition became more intense earlier this year when Uniswap governance proposed a “UNIfication proposal” aimed at allowing protocol revenue to flow to UNI token holders. Cutler publicly criticized the move, arguing that it weakened Uniswap’s relationship with liquidity providers, the core engine of any DEX.
“They take funds from liquidity providers and provide it to token holders, which means paying less for the most basic services in DeFi,” he said.
(The UNifcation proposal is Uniswap’s plan to simplify how the protocol works and start sharing transaction fees with UNI token holders, a move that will change who is paid within the exchange.)
Uniswap did not promptly respond to a request for comment.
So far, Dromos Labs’ competencies have been largely limited to Layer 2 networks. Aero’s launch of the Ethereum mainnet aims to change this dynamic and test whether its model can scale on the home turf of Uniswap and Curve.
While Aero is designed to serve retail users seeking network mobility, Dromos Labs is also built with institutional adoption in mind.
“Institutions will use DeFi rails, but those rails have to be institutional grade, that’s non-negotiable,” Cutler said. “There can’t be a layer of human dependencies. Everything has to be verifiable.”
This includes on-chain automation, operational risk reduction, and compliance tools embedded directly at the protocol level, capabilities that Cutler said are critical as capital markets increasingly move on-chain.
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