Optimism DEX Velodrome Generates Record Weekly Fees Following Coinbase Announcement

Velodrome, the largest trading and liquidity marketplace on layer two scaling system Optimism, recorded its highest all-time weekly fees of more than $101,460 starting on Feb. 23.

With three days left in the week, Velodrome is on pace to generate $146,790 in fees, according to a Dune dashboard created by Michael Silberling, who works in the data department at OP Labs. By comparison, Optimism and Ethereum have been averaging roughly $490,000 and $33 million in weekly fees since the start of the year, respectively, data from total value locked (TVL) aggregator DeFiLlama shows.

The recent move in all-time weekly fees follows Coinbase’s announcement last week launching Base, another layer two network built using Optimism tech, which has sparked interest in Optimism’s ecosystem. The price of Velodrome’s native token VELO, which has a market capitalization of roughly $62 million, has soared 84.3% in the past seven days, despite sliding 8.6% in the past day at time of press, per CoinGecko. In the same week, Velodrome had $263 million in weekly trading volume, a six-month high.

The top two most popular pairs on Velodrome by fees generated are OP/USDC, and VELO/USDC.

OP, airdropped on May 31, 2022, is the native token of the Optimism protocol, which grants holders governance rights regarding technical and public-goods funding decisions. VELO is a utility token for Velodrome that is used to reward liquidity providers through emissions.

Data from blockchain analytics firm Nansen shows Velodrome has had more than 14,000 users and 81,000 transactions, respectively, in the past seven days.

Additionally, DeFiLlama states that Velodrome’s TVL stands over $315 million, making it the seventh-largest decentralized exchange (DEX).