Velodrome Crypto Platform

Velodrome Finance is a trading and liquidity protocol on Optimism and was launched in 2022. The protocol’s founding team has also two other projects; veDAO and Information Token. Optimism is an Ethereum network scaling solution project that was founded in 2019. Optimism is powered by optimistic roll-up technology and is designed to provide faster and cheaper Ethereum transactions. The protocol offers swap, liquidity pools, and vesting services.

VELO is the protocol’s native token that is used for utility purposes. VELO holders can stake their tokens and earn veVELO governance tokens in return. While VELO tokens are ERC20 tokens, veVELO tokens are in the form of NFT which is secured with ERC721 standards. There is an interesting detail about the VELO token launch. 1% of the tokens are given to Genesis Trading company which operates under Digital Currency Group. The Genesis group halted withdrawals in the last quarter of 2022. The Digital Currency Group faces big troubles nowadays against the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The SEC started an investigation against the company and publicly alleged the company for selling unregistered securities.

Optimism blockchain is criticized for its tokenomics because of its high inflationary character and uneven distribution. More than 20% of the Op tokens are allocated to corporate investors which raises questions about the project’s decentralization. Most of the OP tokens are vested and they will be released until the year 2026. There is currently only 5% of the tokens are in circulation and there will be a big token unlock in May 2023. OP token inflation is expected to be higher than 100% in the next few years and the price is likely to go much lower.

There has been a scandalous exploit on Velodrome Finance protocol. The exploit caused a $350K loss in funds. The investigations pointed out a prominent team member whose pseudonymous name is Gabagool. The protocol is still at a very early stage for a DeFi project and is already known for notorious insider exploits. It is quite interesting that many projects in the Optimism network have such exposure.