23.9 Million AERO Swaps Analysed:
What Aerodrome's Token Holders Leave on the Table
How TWAP execution changes the economics of large token sales on Aerodrome's native token.
Every week, AERO holders on Base try to sell large positions and get destroyed by price impact. They watch the number in the "you receive" field drop as they type. They hit confirm anyway because they don't have a better option.
We analysed 23,932,916 real AERO swaps across 4 DEXs on Base — filtered out bots, MEV sandwiches, and dust — and simulated what a Slicr TWAP order would have gotten vs an instant swap across 2,505 scenarios.
The Data
We filtered 23,932,916 raw swaps across four venues down to 113,630 clean human trades using five sequential filters: dust removal (<$1K), high-frequency bot detection, block density, sandwich pair detection, and bot pattern removal. The 99.5% filter rate is driven by PancakeSwap arb bots cycling ~130K swaps/day between shallow PancakeSwap pools and the deep Aerodrome pool. Filters are conservative — results understate the TWAP advantage, not overstate it.
Results — Savings at a glance
| Order size | Est. % of swaps | Est. % of volume | Median saving |
|---|---|---|---|
| ≥ $10K | ~4% | ~36% | +$724 (+8.0%) |
| ≥ $25K | ~1% | ~24% | +$3,908 (+19.8%) |
| ≥ $50K | <1% | ~17% | +$12,444 (+38.3%) |
| ≥ $100K | <0.2% | ~11% | +$34,893 (+72.5%) |
TWAP benefits sellers and buyers equally — AMM price impact is symmetric.
Whale savings — $4.5M left on the table
15 wallets with more than $500K in total AERO volume and 10 or fewer transactions collectively left $4.5M on the table by instant swapping instead of using TWAP execution. These aren't bots or market makers — they're low-frequency holders dumping large positions in the worst possible way.
TWAP won 100% of the time
Across all simulations using a 24h TWAP, TWAP outperformed instant swap 100% of the time — on both Uniswap V3 (77 weeks) and Aerodrome (95 weeks). Not one exception. The median saving on a $50K order was $12,444 — against a Slicr fee of ~$150. That's an 83:1 value-to-fee ratio.
Uniswap V3 vs Aerodrome
We ran the same backtest against both venues. The TWAP advantage holds on both — same direction, with Uniswap V3 slightly stronger due to concentrated liquidity. For AERO, Uniswap V3 outperforms Aerodrome by 1–2 percentage points across all order sizes:
| Order | Uniswap V3 (24h TWAP) | Aerodrome (24h TWAP) |
|---|---|---|
| $10K | +8.0% (+$724) | +6.7% (+$611) |
| $25K | +19.8% (+$3,908) | +16.6% (+$3,389) |
| $50K | +38.3% (+$12,444) | +32.2% (+$11,131) |
| $100K | +72.5% (+$34,893) | +61.0% (+$32,149) |
Win rate: 100% on both venues across all order sizes and durations tested.
Top whale wallets
These five wallets each had 10 or fewer lifetime AERO transactions but moved between $645K and $1.15M in total volume. Each left hundreds of thousands on the table.
| # | Wallet | Txns | Volume | Got | TWAP sim (24h) | Est. saving |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0xb0eb…a2a | 2 | $984,410 | $331,577 | $804,292 | +$472,716 |
| 2 | 0xca74…a3d | 8 | $1,146,102 | $707,480 | $1,073,497 | +$366,017 |
| 3 | 0x8524…b9e | 10 | $1,136,422 | $708,741 | $1,065,976 | +$357,236 |
| 4 | 0x76bd…038 | 4 | $873,142 | $422,484 | $778,995 | +$356,511 |
| 5 | 0xaf3e…238 | 2 | $645,419 | $281,704 | $567,282 | +$285,579 |
Caveats
- AMM formula is V2 constant-product — slightly overstates impact vs real V3
- Pool liquidity estimated from rolling median swap sizes (active depth, not total TVL)
- PancakeSwap arb bots inflate raw swap count — filtered aggressively but residual noise possible
- Concurrent large sellers compete for the same recovery; figures are single-order simulations