The Aero Foundation's Momentum Fund, the flagship buyback program for the Aero exchange (@aeroxyz), purchased 243,000 $AERO this week and staked the entire amount — a departure from its two earlier buybacks, in which the acquired tokens were burned outright.

By staking the tokens like any other participant, the fund can now use them to direct rewards to trading markets and earn a share of the exchange's revenue. The fund does not operate on a fixed schedule: it times its purchases to market conditions, and it does not sell the tokens it acquires.

How This Buyback Differs From the First Two

The fund's first two buybacks ended in permanent burns, which permanently remove tokens from circulation. Staking, by contrast, keeps the tokens in the fund's hands while attaching voting power and revenue rights — meaning this week's purchase remains in circulation rather than being removed from the supply.

That choice runs against industry convention, where token buyback programs have most often paired open-market purchases with burns as their endpoint. Routing repurchased tokens into staking instead converts them into an income- and vote-bearing position while committing the same capital to the token.

Aero's own economic overview states that the fund has flexibility in how it uses its resources. The same document notes that the fund is also a large participant in the staking system, and Aero says the market-aware approach is deliberate.

Background: The Aerodrome and Velodrome Merger

The Momentum Fund operates under the merged Aero exchange, formed through the combination of Aerodrome and Velodrome. The new structure changed how staking works, and that is the mechanism the fund now taps with its newly staked tokens. The Momentum Fund also builds on earlier foundation programs.

The vote-and-earn arrangement the fund is now using follows the vote-escrow pattern common across decentralized exchanges, in which staked tokens carry weight in directing rewards toward trading markets and, in return, receive a share of protocol fees.

As with any buyback, the outcome for the token price is not guaranteed. What can be tracked from here is mechanical rather than price-related: whether future Momentum Fund purchases are staked or burned, and how the fund's newly acquired voting weight directs rewards across Aero's trading markets.

Sources

• The Aero Economy (Aero)
• Aero Momentum Fund Burns 233,000 $AERO in Second Buyback of the Week (Cryptonews)
• Aerodrome and Velodrome Merge Into Aero Across Seven Networks (Coinpaprika)