Aero, the DeFi liquidity protocol that emerged from last year’s merger of Aerodrome and Velodrome, started publishing its core smart contracts on August 3. The code is rolling out in batches ahead of a $400K public audit contest later this month, with a full protocol launch targeted for September 2026.
After months of private security reviews by firms including ChainSecurity and Sherlock, the protocol reports that no critical or high-severity vulnerabilities have been identified.
The rollout playbook
Aero is releasing code in sequential batches, with final audits and associated fixes scheduled to wrap up by August 21. Three days later, on August 24, a public audit contest kicks off with a $400K prize pool. That contest runs through September 11, giving independent security researchers nearly three weeks to examine the codebase. The contest also includes a Mythos-focused review component. By the time the protocol targets its full launch in September, the codebase will have been examined by professional audit firms, contest participants, and internal reviewers.
What Aero actually is
Aero was formed in November 2025 when Aerodrome and Velodrome merged their operations. Aerodrome had established itself as the dominant decentralized exchange on Base, while Velodrome held a similar position on Optimism. The protocol operates on a ve(3,3)-style model, which blends vote-escrowed tokenomics with game theory to align incentives between liquidity providers and long-term token holders. Users lock tokens to gain voting power over how liquidity incentives are distributed.
The team has also signaled plans for an “Aero-Lite” version featuring SlipstreamV3 pools, designed to be deployed on new chains quickly.
The audit process
Aero’s multi-stage audit process began in June 2026. ChainSecurity and Sherlock are among the firms involved, and neither has flagged critical issues. The public contest then serves as a final filter before the September mainnet deployment.