Liquidity operations on Aerodrome have two steps: first deposit a token pair into a pool to receive LP tokens, then stake those LP tokens in a gauge to earn AERO emissions. If you do not stake, you only earn trading fees. After staking, you no longer receive trading fees. The two rewards do not arrive at the same time.
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Two types of pools: know the difference before you choose
Aerodrome liquidity pools are divided into two categories, and this directly affects everything you do afterward.
Basic (volatile pool) is a traditional constant product AMM. You deposit both tokens according to the current pool ratio, and you do not need to set a price range. It suits people who do not want to manage positions frequently, but capital efficiency is lower, so the same TVL earns less in trading fee share.
Concentrated (concentrated liquidity pool, also called Slipstream) lets you provide liquidity within a chosen price range. The narrower the range, the more concentrated your capital, and the same amount of money can earn more trading fees. The tradeoff is that once the price moves outside your range, that liquidity stops earning fees and becomes idle. The docs include a reminder: the default range is often set too narrow, so you need to judge it yourself before adjusting.
If you have a rough idea of the price range for a token pair, the concentrated pool has a higher earnings ceiling. If you do not want to watch the market, the basic pool is easier.
How to deposit liquidity
The steps below apply to the Aerodrome web app. Your wallet must be connected to the Base network.
- Open the Aerodrome Liquidity page and choose the token pair you want to provide.
- Click New Deposit and check the pool type and current ratio. A basic pool automatically calculates the required amounts on both sides. A concentrated pool requires you to manually select a price range.
- After confirming the amounts, first execute Approve, then execute Deposit. Both steps require wallet signature confirmation.
- After a successful deposit, you will receive LP tokens representing your share of the pool. At this point your funds are already earning trading fees in the pool, but they are not yet earning AERO emissions.
The key step: staking. Aerodrome docs are clear: unstaked LP deposits only earn trading fees, not AERO emissions. Staking is done on the same page. After depositing, click Stake or Deposit & Stake to put the LP tokens into the corresponding gauge contract.
Staked and unstaked positions earn from different sources. There is no state where you receive both rewards at once. After staking, you give up the trading fees generated by that position, which flow to veAERO voters, and in exchange you receive AERO emissions settled once per week.
How to receive AERO emissions
AERO emissions settle weekly. Every Thursday, veAERO holders vote to decide how much emission each gauge receives in the next cycle. The more votes your staked pool receives, the more AERO you get.
This means your emission APR is not fixed. The same pool may have very different returns from last week to the week after next, depending on votes and the AERO price. A high displayed APR is only an estimate for the current cycle, not a promise of future returns.
Claiming AERO usually happens through a Claim button on the staking panel. You can claim manually on a regular schedule, or choose auto-compounding if the platform supports it. Auto-compounding reinvests the AERO back into your position, gradually increasing your share.
Exit: unstake first, then remove liquidity
The exit order is the reverse of entry, and the docs specifically mark this as a two-step process.
If you are currently staking, first click Unstake on the staking panel to take your LP tokens back from the gauge. This step only returns the LP tokens. The funds in the pool have not moved yet. Unclaimed AERO rewards are usually handled at the same time as unstaking, depending on the interface prompts.
After the LP tokens are back in your wallet, go to the liquidity page, find the corresponding position, and choose Remove. You can choose to remove 25%, 50%, or 100%, and after confirmation you will receive the corresponding share of both tokens.
If you click Remove first but the position is still in the gauge, the system will prompt you to unstake first. The order cannot be skipped.
Impermanent loss and calculating actual returns
Impermanent loss (IL) refers to the situation where price movement causes the value of the two tokens you receive back to be lower than if you had simply held both tokens directly. This is a structural risk of AMM pools and has nothing to do with platform safety.
To calculate your actual return from Aerodrome, you need to look at the full picture:
Total return = trading fees or AERO emissions + / - impermanent loss
Basic pool fees are a 0.3% share of trading volume. Suppose a pool has TVL of 1 million and daily trading volume of 100,000. Daily fees are 300 dollars, and annualized fee APR is about 10.95%. AERO emissions may add another 20%–50% annualized, but emission APR fluctuates with votes and token price.
The size of impermanent loss depends on how far the prices of the two tokens diverge. If both token prices move in sync, IL is small. If one rises while the other falls, IL can erode or even wipe out fee earnings.
A practical way to judge before depositing: ask yourself, "If I plan to hold both tokens for a while, how much price divergence would make me regret providing liquidity?" The narrower the range in a concentrated pool, the higher the IL risk, because even a small price deviation can trigger one-sided conversion.
Common sticking points
LP tokens are in the wallet but the pool does not show a position. First confirm that the wallet is switched to the Base network, then check whether the LP tokens are still under your own address. If they are already staked, the position information is in the gauge panel rather than the ordinary liquidity list.
Balance did not change after unstaking. Unstaking and removing liquidity are two separate on-chain operations. Unstaking only returns the LP tokens to you. You still need to manually execute Remove to get back the underlying tokens.
Emission APR suddenly dropped a lot. Emissions are redistributed after each weekly vote. If your pool received fewer votes this week, or the AERO price fell, the APR measured in dollars will drop. This is not a malfunction; it is normal mechanism volatility.
You want to use an LP position as collateral to borrow USDC. Some third-party protocols, such as Revert Lend, support using staked Aerodrome positions as collateral to borrow stablecoins. But this is another layer of leveraged operation and introduces liquidation risk, which is beyond the scope of this article. If you are only providing liquidity, you do not need to touch this step.
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References
- iAero Protocol Docs·Providing Liquidity, page published or updated: 2025-08-31; verified: 2026-10-06.
- Presearch Docs·Liquidity Providing Aerodrome, page published or updated: 2025-04-21; verified: 2026-10-06.
- Aerodrome Finance Docs, page update date not indicated; verified: 2026-10-06.
- evedex·Aerodrome Aero Base DEX: Liquidity Pools on Base Chain, page published or updated: 2026-06-28; verified: 2026-10-06.
- Revert Docs·Using staked positions as collateral, page update date not indicated; verified: 2026-10-06.
- Revert Docs·The staked-collateral carry, page published or updated: 2026-06-13; verified: 2026-10-06.
