Aerodrome, the largest decentralized exchange (DEX) based on the Ethereum Layer 2 network, reported a suspected front-end breach on Saturday, November 22nd. Early on the weekend, the project said it was investigating the attack and asked users to avoid centralized domains.
Dromos Labs’ sister protocol suffers from another DNS hijacking
On Saturday, Aerodrome informed social media platform X of an ongoing investigation into a centralized domain DNS hijacking. While assuring users that all smart contracts are secure, the project directed users to access the DEX through a decentralized mirror.
For context, DNS hijacking allows an attacker or malicious party to manipulate the Domain Name System (DNS) to redirect users from a legitimate website to a malicious website. Essentially, the breach redirected Base-native Aerodrome users to a fraudulent website on Wednesday.
It appears that the decentralized exchange’s problems may be due to its domain provider. Earlier in the day, Aerodrome used the X platform to contact Web3 domain provider My.box, notifying it that its infrastructure may have been compromised.
Source: @AerodromeFi on X
Base-based Aerodrome is not the only decentralized exchange affected by this DNS hijacking, as its sister protocol Velodrome also appears to be facing similar issues. Optimism’s largest decentralized exchange, Velodrome, also reported investigating a similar front-end breach.
Interestingly, this latest DNS hijack comes nearly two years after a similar attack affected users’ ability to access both decentralized exchanges in November 2023. At the time, blockchain detective ZachXBT estimated losses from the 2023 attack at approximately $100,000.
According to DefiLlama data, approximately $399.17 million in value is locked up at the airfield, reflecting a decline of almost 4% since the DNS hijacking. Meanwhile, the TVL for the velodrome is approximately $49.74 million.
Aero and velodrome to become integrated platform in 2026
The timing of this DNS attack is quite interesting, especially since Dromos Labs, the developer of Base-native Aerodrome and Optimism-based Velodrome, recently revealed plans to integrate both protocols into a trading hub called “Aero.”
Dromos further revealed that this development will also see the protocol’s existing tokens consolidated into a single AERO token. The Aero Trading Hub is expected to initially launch on Ethereum mainnet and Circle’s Arc blockchain in the second quarter of 2026.
The price of AERO on the daily timeframe | Source: AEROUSDT chart on TradingView
Featured image from Medium, chart from TradingView
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