Velodrome crosses $100 million in TVL on Optimism

Decentralized exchange Velodrome has crossed the $100 million mark for total value locked (TVL) on the Optimism network (a second-layer on Ethereum).

The total value locked on the exchange hit $106 million on Thursday, signaling a fast-growing demand among DeFi users.

This puts it in the running against dominant rival exchanges like Uniswap on the network. While Uniswap has roughly double the trading volume of Velodrome on Optimism, the newer upstart sees more than twice as many transactions and now has a larger TVL. In fact, it now has the second-largest TVL of all applications on Optimism.

Launched on 1 June, Velodrome is a fork of Solidly, a decentralized exchange built by Yearn Finance founder Andre Cronje on the Fantom blockchain. The main reason behind the surge in TVL is that users have locked their tokens to earn weekly rewards.

Velodrome relies on a vote-escrowed (VE) protocol, which incentivizes users to stake the VELO governance token. On Velodrome, one can stake VELO for veVELO, another token that gives holders the right to receive VELO rewards and a share of the protocol fees.

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