After all fees are paid to the holders, why is AERO still weighed down b

Aerodrome, the leading DEX on Base by volume, merged with Velodrome effective October 22, 2026, to form the Aero brand operating across seven chains, and a new analysis argues the token remains weighed down by emissions despite its generous fee distribution. Over the past twelve months, Aero passed 70.6% of fees to locked voters ($86.9M) versus Uniswap's 6.3% ($58.8M), yet the old system minted roughly $19.6M more in AERO than it returned in fees and bribes—annualizing to an $80M–$105M gap at October's pace once one-time pool bribes are excluded. Under the merged system, rewards are dollar-denominated with a 1.2x cap on predicted pool revenue, implying holders recoup about $0.83 per $1.00 of AERO emitted—better than the prior $0.52 but still dilutive by design. Day-one migration was clean on positions (81.6% of veAERO voting weight converted, 6,654 sAERO positions allocated) but soft on liquidity (TVL 8.4% below expected, volume at 55% of pre-merge baseline, 37% outflow from legacy pools). Aero holds 53.6% of Base DEX volume versus Uniswap's 27.1%, though Uniswap earns 2.7x more fees per dollar of volume (25.5 bps vs 9.5 bps). Watch whether the revenue-linked reward cap converts a dilution-funded distribution into one backed by actual customer revenue, and whether liquidity and volume recover to pre-merge levels.