Glossary
Velodrome
Optimism's flagship DEX — the original ve(3,3) AMM combining vote-escrowed governance, gauge-directed emissions, and trader-fee payouts to voters.
Velodrome launched on Optimism in 2022 as a refinement of Andre Cronje's Solidly design. Users lock VELO into vote-escrowed veVELO, then direct VELO emissions to pools via gauge votes and receive the trading fees those pools generate.
The model concentrates DeFi activity around the protocol's governance system: any project wanting deep liquidity on Optimism either accumulates veVELO directly or pays existing holders to vote for its pool. Velodrome and its Base sibling Aerodrome are the two most-developed implementations of the pattern.