Originally published at https://mrnasdog.com/research/aero/inflation

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AERO Inflation Analysis · October 2026 · Supply growing · projected to keep growing

AERO is inflationary, and the next 90 days add a one-time jump. Aerodrome’s weekly mint sent 55.80M AERO to the market in the 90 days to Oct 16 2026 and ended locks freed 4.07M, while holders locked 22.43M and the growth fund locked 2.75M it had bought back — a net +3.46% of the circulating supply. With the Aero upgrade on Oct 22 2026, Velodrome holders receive up to 59.47M tradable AERO and new Aero rewards replace the old mint, so the next 90 days project +10.84%. There is no hard cap: the Aero rewards ceiling starts at 20% a year.

The verdict, in one paragraph

Over the 90 days from Jul 18 to Oct 16 2026, AERO’s circulating supply grew +3.46%: 59.87M AERO reached the market and 25.18M AERO left it, a net 34.69M on a float of 1.00B. Our inflation monitor reads +4.02%, a gap of 0.57 percentage points. We checked it: the monitor’s 90 days run one week earlier (Jul 11 to Oct 9 2026) and divide by the supply at the start, not today. Measured on-chain over that same week-earlier window, the float rose 4.14%, within 0.12 points of the monitor, so the gap closes and no warning is shown. For the next 90 days the ledger projects +10.84%. In one line: AERO is inflationary by design, a weekly-paid exchange token whose holders lock about a third of what is minted.

Sell pressure: where new AERO comes from

Protocol inflation — 55.80M AERO. Every Thursday the Aerodrome minter creates new AERO. Thirteen weekly mints between Jul 23 and Oct 15 2026 created 61.94M AERO, about 4.76M each, and the total supply rose by exactly that amount. Most of it went to liquidity providers through the gauges, about 220K a week went to the team, and 6.14M was the rebase that is paid straight into existing locks. The rebase never reaches the market, so the part that did is 55.80M. From Oct 22 2026 the old mint stops. Aero rewards replace it: they are created only when liquidity providers claim them, there is no rebase, and the project expects them to run near 12% a year, which is about 58.74M AERO in the next 90 days.

Vesting unlocks — 0. AERO never had a vesting calendar. Its launch allocations were handed out as locks, so a release shows up as a lock ending, not as an unlock date.

Foundation and unscheduled unlocks — 0. The team wallets we track are all counted as circulating already, so a sale from them moves coins between holders and adds no new supply. They are listed in the overhang section below.

Long-term locked — 4.07M AERO. About 998.12M AERO sits in vote-escrow locks and is not counted as circulating. When a lock ends and its owner withdraws, the coins return to the market: 1,330 withdrawals released 4.07M in 90 days. At the upgrade every lock becomes staked AERO with the same time left, so we expect locks to keep ending at about this pace.

Velodrome holders’ share — up to 59.47M AERO next. Aero merges Aerodrome with Velodrome, its sister exchange on OP Mainnet. Each VELO converts into 0.044 AERO. About 1.35B VELO is free, which becomes up to 59.47M new tradable AERO; the locked VELO becomes staked AERO and stays out of the float. The project itself expects circulating AERO to rise from about 1.01B to at most about 1.07B. VELO that is never upgraded never counts, so the real number can be lower.

Buy pressure: where new AERO goes

Programmatic buyback — 2.75M AERO. Aerodrome’s growth fund spends protocol revenue on AERO about twice a week. In 90 days it bought 3.93M AERO for about $2.01M. Buying alone does not take coins out of the float, because the fund’s Safe counts as circulating; locking does. The fund locked 2.75M AERO for good on Aug 24 2026, and 1.62M still waits in its Safe. After the upgrade its successor fund is set to buy back and burn. At today’s price of about $0.87, the same $2.01M buys about 2.30M AERO in the next 90 days.

Protocol fee burn — 0. Aerodrome burns nothing from trading fees: every fee goes to the voters who lock AERO. The dead address grew by less than one AERO in the window. Aero adds per-pool reward caps that can burn rewards a pool does not earn, but the project has given no size for it, so it books zero.

Foundation buy — 0. Apart from the growth fund, no team or foundation wallet bought AERO in this window.

New long-term lock — 22.43M AERO. Holders moved 22.43M AERO from the market into locks: 11.14M of new locks and top-ups, and 11.29M that relay users moved out of relay reward pots into their own locks. Relay rewards ended on Oct 14 2026, so for the next 90 days we count only the 11.14M pace of new locks.

Foundation and overhang

Five pools of AERO could reach the market without any new mint, and all of them are already counted as circulating. A team multisig holds 29.25M AERO, down only 153.6K in 90 days. The team Safe that receives the weekly team share holds 3.77M, up from 0.73M, so it has kept what it received. The growth fund’s Safe holds 1.62M of bought-back AERO waiting to be locked or burned. Relay reward pots hold 60.13M that only their lockers can claim into a lock. Unclaimed rebases in the distributor add about 1.71M. We read these balances on-chain at every rebuild. If any of them falls between rebuilds and the coins go to the market, that outflow enters the Foundation and unscheduled unlocks row at the next refresh.

How AERO compares to other vote-escrow DEX tokens

AERO belongs to the vote-escrow family of exchange tokens, where holders lock coins to vote on which pools get new rewards and are paid the trading fees in return. In that family the supply question is always the same race: the weekly mint against the share of coins that holders lock. Over these 90 days AERO holders locked about a third of what the minter released, which is why the float still grew about 3.5% a quarter. Curve’s CRV runs a similar lock model with a slowly falling mint, while AERO’s mint is a fixed share of supply that the new Aero system will steer by each pool’s revenue instead of by a fixed number of coins.

AERO also differs from exchange tokens that buy back and burn with fee revenue, such as PancakeSwap’s CAKE. Aerodrome hands its fees to lockers, and its only buyer of its own coin is a growth fund spending about $2M a quarter, which absorbed under 5% of the new coins. The planned switch from locking bought coins to burning them changes where they go, not how many.

The Velodrome merger is the unusual part. Most mergers swap one coin for another at a fixed rate; here the Aerodrome side keeps its coins 1:1 and the Velodrome side gets a 5.5% slice, so AERO holders absorb up to about 59.5M new tradable coins in one step.

What to watch in the next 90 days

Oct 22 2026 — the Aero launch. The old mint stops, Aero rewards start, and VELO converts into AERO at 0.044. How much VELO is actually upgraded decides how much of the 59.47M lands.

Nov 2 to Nov 4 2026 — exchange conversions. Large exchanges convert VELO and AERO for their users in early November, so most of the Velodrome share should arrive by then.

The first weeks of Aero rewards. The project expects 8% to 12% a year with a 20% ceiling. A rate near 8% would cut the next-90-day mint by about a third; a rate near 20% would add two thirds.

How staked AERO is counted. Today locked AERO is not counted as circulating. If the new staked AERO were counted differently, the circulating number would jump without a single new coin. The relay reward pots, 60.13M, also need to be moved before the upgrade; if lockers claim them into staked AERO, the float falls.

The successor fund’s first burns. A bigger buy-and-burn than the old fund’s $2M a quarter would be the clearest sign that buying can start to keep up with new supply.

Summary

AERO, the token of the Aerodrome exchange on Base, is inflationary: its supply grew +3.46% in the 90 days to Oct 16 2026, and the MrNasDog Pressure Framework projects +10.84% for the next 90 days. The weekly mint, 55.80M AERO to the market, is the main source of new coins, and holders locking 22.43M plus a small growth-fund buyback absorb less than half of it. The Aero upgrade on Oct 22 2026 adds up to 59.47M AERO for Velodrome holders in one step and swaps the mint for Aero rewards expected near 12% a year, with a 20% ceiling and no hard cap. The key risk is that locks and buybacks fall behind a bigger, merged supply.

MrNasDog Pressure Framework analysis of AERO, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 16 2026.

Original: https://mrnasdog.com/research/aero/inflation · Data + explanation only. Not financial advice.