Aerodrome is a decentralized exchange built on Base, designed to incentivize liquidity through high emissions and ve-token mechanics. It’s part of a broader push to bootstrap onchain activity in the Base ecosystem by rewarding early participants. Like many protocols in their early phase, the opportunity comes with high yield and high volatility.

As with everything in the FAFO Series, none of this is financial advice. It’s a reflection on my own experience, what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, and what I would have found useful when I was starting out. If the paragraph above makes zero sense to you, that doesn’t mean you should walk away. I’m still figuring out all that Aerodrome offers. But even without knowing everything, I’ve found value in simply getting started, learning by doing, and paying attention to their evolving incentive programs.

Aerodrome has actually become part of my daily routine. I wake up, make my claims, and vote with my locks to earn other tokens and increase the APY on the pool, which yields more $AERO. My thinking is this: if you believe in Base, then it makes sense that Aerodrome will continue to grow over the next four to six years as crypto regulation ramps up. Over the past year, I’ve started to understand how I can get the flywheel working in my favor.

One of the key mechanics is something called the "Flight School Bonus" during each epoch. That just means a weekly time window. If you create a lock of 2500 $AERO or more during an epoch, you get an additional 4-year lock. It’s essentially a bonus veNFT that you can vote with or deposit into a relay. I’m now approaching my second 2500 $AERO deposit, and it’s becoming clear how this can start to compound over time.

But let’s back up. What is a lock, how long can it be, and why would you do it?

A lock can vary in length, but a full 4-year lock gives you the most voting power. The more voting power you have, the more influence you have over APYs on liquidity pairings and the more voting rewards you receive weekly. Personally, I keep my Flight School bonus in the veAERO Maxi Relay. That means I don’t have to vote. It auto-compounds and generates $AERO for me each week. My other lock I use to vote for $VEIL, which has been offering around 100 percent APY paid in $AERO.

Right now, I’m consistently staked in two pools: $TN100X and $VEIL. Both have been offering average APYs over 100 percent. At the time of writing, $TN100X is at 188 percent and $VEIL is at 125 percent, both up from last week. The third pool I rotate in and out of is the $AERO-USDC pair. When I’m still building toward the 2500 $AERO threshold for a new lock, this pool helps me earn around 30 percent APY and accumulate more $AERO, especially when its price drops relative to USDC.

This past week, I felt some momentum building for $AERO. Since I already qualified for the Flight School bonus and didn’t want to get clipped by impermanent loss if the price moved up (which it did), I unstaked that pair. Once I’ve made my new lock deposit, I’ll go back to the $AERO-USDC pool to start accruing for a third lock.

I don’t know if $AERO will be successful years from now, but I’ve reached the point where I’m comfortable being wrong. If I can accumulate a few more locks by the end of this year, I’ll be curious to see when the compounding effect really starts to accelerate.