Aerodrome's DECENTRALIZATION review: STAGE 1

@aerodrome is an Automated Market Maker designed to serve as the liquidity hub for the Coinbase ecosystem. The protocol has many features:
- Multiple liquidity structures like x*y=k from Uniswap V2, Stableswap from Curve, Concentrated Liquidity from Uniswap V3
- ve(3,3) incentive layer

The central trading and liquidity marketplace on BASE

https://aerodrome.finance

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🚨Upgradability
🟡Aerodrome has a medium-risk score
Aerodrome’s AMM is immutable, so no potential impact on user funds. The remaining permissions are related to the protocol's rewards system and periphery contracts controlled by several multisigs, including an undeclared multisig with the following permissions:

1) Control over a whitelist of special voters with the ability to change the rewards distributed to Liquidity Providers. 
"regular" veNFT holders compete in weekly voting rounds to distribute a fixed amount of rewards, paid in the protocol's native token, AERO. This public voting period is followed by a "private" voting window of 1 hour during which only the whitelisted veNFT holders can participate, potentially changing the accrued yield.

2) FactoryRegistry, allowing it to approve or reject which factory contracts can create pools in the protocol
Users' swaps are routed through the pools created from the approved factories.
Users are protected from malicious factories (and pools) through a user-defined slippage tolerance, which is enforced on all swaps on the router contract. On the other hand, only pools created from the default factory are enabled for LP provisioning functions, effectively protecting LPs in the protocol.

3) Ability to kill and revive gauges, meaning stop/enable gauges to receive and distribute rewards to LPs and voters, but does not affect the rewards already distributed.

All those permissions may change the expected performance of the system, but user funds remain unaffected, hence the Medium risk

⛅Autonomy
🟢Aerodrome has a low-risk score
The protocol does not have external dependencies:
- Aerodrome's AMM sets the price all by himself.
- The incentive layer relies on veAERO voters, which is protocol-native

Nothing outside of Aerodrome can change the expected protocol performance

🪟Exit Window
🟡Aerodrome has a medium-risk score
Existing permissions have a "Medium" risk score, but no timelocks have been found protecting the various permissioned functions in the protocol. All updates take effect immediately.

🚪Accessibility
🟢Aerodrome has a low-risk score
Aerodrome provides multiple access points for users, including both centralized interfaces:
aerodrome.finance
alt.aerodrome.finance
And decentralized interfaces on IPFS:
aero.drome.eth
aero.drome.eth.limo
aero.drome.eth.link
This diversity in user interfaces ensures redundancy, allowing users to access the protocol even if one interface becomes unavailable.

Overall Score: Stage 1

Aerodrome reached the best decentralization score on Autonomy and Accessibility criteria.
The main reason why Upgradability and Exit Window criteria are rated medium is that permission owners can impact the yield, and upgrades take effect immediately. 
That said, Aerodrome is more decentralized than most of the protocols reviewed so far

🔗Links
✍️Protocol Reviewer (find on X): @CookingCryptos & @boutellier_yves, congratulations for their work !🙏

📜DeFiScan Full review:https://www.defiscan.info/protocols/aerodrome

Socials:@aerodrome & X: https://x.com/@AerodromeFi
Website: https://aerodrome.finance/
GitHub: https://github.com/aerodrome-finance
DeFiLlama: https://defillama.com/protocol/aerodrome#information

⛓️Chain
🟡Aerodrome has a medium-risk score
Aerodrome is deployed on Base, a Layer 2 in Stage 1 according to @l2beat.

Risk Summary:
- Funds can be stolen if a contract receives a malicious code upgrade. Upgrades must be approved by both the BaseMultisig1 and the OpFoundationOperationsSafe. There is no delay on upgrades.
- MEV can be extracted if the operator exploits their centralized position and frontruns user transactions.

These ratings may be updated if the safety of Base is reassessed.