MET, the token behind Meteora’s liquidity layer

01 · BasicsWhat MET is, and what it is not

MET is the token of Meteora, the Solana protocol behind DLMM, DAMM v2 and the Dynamic Bonding Curve used by many launchpads. It went live at a token generation eventTGEToken generation event: the moment a token is minted and first becomes transferable and tradable. on 23 October 2025, more than two years after the project rebranded from Mercurial Finance.

Technically, MET is an ordinary SPL tokenSPL tokenThe standard token format on Solana, comparable to ERC-20 on Ethereum. Every SPL token is identified by a unique mint address.. There is nothing exotic about the token contract itself: it has a mint address, a supply, and balances held in wallets. What makes MET interesting is the economic layer Meteora has built around it — a staking program paid from protocol fees, treasury buybacks, points, and a vesting schedule that will keep releasing supply into the early 2030s.

It helps to be clear about what MET does not do. Holding MET does not give you a claim on the fees that liquidity providers earn in Meteora pools — those fees belong to the LPs who supply the capital. You do not need MET to swap, to add liquidity or to launch a token on Meteora. And MET is not a stablecoin or a yield-bearing deposit: its price moves with the market, sometimes sharply.

The token has a long back story. Mercurial originally planned to migrate its MER token to MET in late 2022. That plan was replaced by the LP Stimulus Package, which promised a MET airdrop to liquidity providers; the airdrop eventually arrived together with the TGE. That history explains why former Mercurial stakeholders and Meteora LPs together received a large slice of the supply on day one.

02 · NumbersSupply and market data

The fixed numbers come straight from Meteora’s tokenomics page. The market numbers move every minute, so treat the snapshot below as a rough orientation and use the live widget at the top of this page for current prices.

Two terms come up constantly when people discuss MET, and they answer different questions. Market capMarket capToken price multiplied by the circulating supply — the value of tokens that can actually trade today. uses the circulating supply, so it reflects what the tradable float is worth right now. FDVFDVFully diluted valuation: token price multiplied by total supply, including tokens that are still locked. uses the total supply, so it tells you what the whole token would be worth if every locked token were already out. For a token with a long vesting schedule, the gap between the two is the supply still waiting to unlock.

At the time of writing, MET trades a little below $0.30, which puts its market cap in the region of $160 million and its FDV near $285 million. CoinGecko lists the all-time high at about $0.69, set on TGE day, and the all-time low at about $0.09, reached roughly eight months later. That is a drawdown of more than 85% from peak to trough, followed by a partial recovery. Whatever you think about MET’s future, that range is a fair reminder of how volatile a young token can be.

CoinGecko’s total supply figure sits slightly below 1 billion because it subtracts burns, including the team burn listed above and any tokens holders have burned themselves. Meteora’s docs explicitly point to CoinGecko as the place to check circulating supply, which is a sensible habit for any token with ongoing unlocks.

03 · DistributionThe MET allocation table

Meteora published a full allocation of the 1 billion tokens before launch. The interesting part is the split between buckets that were fully liquid on day one and the two large buckets that vest.

Add up the liquid rows and you get exactly 48% — the 480 million tokens that circulated at TGE. Roughly a third of the supply went to users and community groups on day one: 15% to LPs under the stimulus plan, 15% to Mercurial holders, 3% to Jupiter stakers, 3% to the launchpad ecosystem and 2% to the M3M3 plan. Jupiter’s share reflects the two projects’ shared roots; JUP stakers were auto-enrolled into positions in MET’s launch pool rather than receiving tokens directly.

The remaining 52% sits with the team and the Meteora Reserve. That concentration is common for protocol tokens, but it is the single biggest variable in MET’s supply story, and it is why the next section matters. If you took part in the LP Stimulus Plan or wondered how the community share was handed out, our guide to the Meteora airdrop walks through who qualified and how claiming worked.

04 · UnlocksVesting and the unlock schedule

Team and Meteora Reserve tokens were fully locked at TGE. After a one-month cliff they began vesting over 72 months, with the first unlock on 23 November 2025 and the last scheduled for 23 October 2031.

Put into numbers: 18% plus 34% is 520 million MET, released over six years. If the release is spread evenly, that is about 86 million MET a year, or a little over 7 million a month. The observed data fits that picture — circulating supply has climbed from 480 million at TGE to roughly 565 million at the time of writing, about one year later. Still, the published table and the locked wallets are the authoritative source, so check them rather than relying on a straight-line estimate.

Unlocked does not mean sold. Reserve tokens can fund ecosystem programs, incentives or partnerships, and team members may hold. But each monthly tranche adds tokens that could reach the market. At a price near $0.29, about 7 million MET is worth around $2 million a month — a useful yardstick when you compare it with buyback sizes or with staking demand. Our MET price outlook uses exactly this kind of comparison to frame scenarios.

05 · UtilityWhat MET is used for

Meteora has layered three mechanisms on top of the token. They differ a lot in how direct and how reliable they are, so it is worth separating them.

Referral Staking: protocol fees in USDC

Launched in July 2026, Referral Staking is MET’s most concrete utility. Stakers share a reward pool funded by 10% of DLMM protocol fees, paid in USDC. Recall that protocol fees are only the slice of trading fees Meteora keeps — in standard DLMM pools that is 10% of the fee, with the other 90% going to LPs, and the exact share varies by pool. So stakers receive a share of a share, but it is real fee income rather than newly printed tokens.

The program has a referral layer too: referrers earn 8% of the protocol fees generated by LPs they bring in, and referred LPs receive 2%. Rewards are capped at 0.1 USDC per staked MET per cycle, and unstaking before a cycle ends forfeits that cycle’s rewards. The first cycle closed in August 2026 with about 76 million MET staked and around $336,000 distributed. That works out to roughly $0.0044 per staked MET for the cycle — far below the cap, and about 1.5% of the token’s value at a price near $0.29. Treat that as one historical data point, not a rate you can expect: rewards depend on DLMM volume and on how much MET is staked.

Buybacks

Meteora has used treasury funds to buy MET on the market. Media reports put the first round at about $10 million in late 2025, covering roughly 2.3% of supply, and a further $1 million in early 2026 that bought about 7 million MET at an average near $0.14. Cumulative buybacks reported at that point were about $13.7 million, close to 4% of supply.

Two caveats keep this honest. Buybacks are discretionary — there is no on-chain rule that converts fees into MET purchases — and the bought tokens are not burned automatically. Meteora also collects protocol revenue as a basket of tokens (SOL, USDC, MET and pool assets) rather than converting everything. And the buyback program has had a rough edge: in January 2026 about $1.5 million of treasury funds was lost to a fake OTC counterparty during a buyback. User funds were not affected.

Comet Points

Announced in December 2025, Comet Points are earned by staking MET and using Meteora products. Planned uses include eligibility for future airdrops or presales and a rewards store, but the full mechanics have not been laid out in the official docs we reviewed. Consider points a possible bonus, not a reason to buy.

06 · MarketsWhere MET trades

MET is widely listed. Data on CoinGecko at the time of writing shows on-chain and centralized markets side by side.

Listings change, and a ticker appearing on CoinGecko does not mean an exchange serves your country. If you want to buy, the route that works everywhere is to acquire SOL, move it to your own wallet and swap on-chain — the step-by-step version is in our guide to buying MET. Whatever route you choose, check that withdrawals use the Solana network and that the token you receive has the official mint address.

07 · SafetyHow to verify the official MET mint

Every token on Solana is identified by its mint address, not its name. Anyone can create a token called “MET” or “Meteora” with a copied logo in minutes. The only reliable check is the mint.

METvsvVRapdj9cFLzq4Tr43xK4tAjQfwX76z3n6mWQL

1. Take the address from the source

   Copy it from the tokenomics page on docs.meteora.ag, not from a social post, a DM or a search ad. The official address happens to start with “METvsv”, which is easy to remember but easy for scammers to imitate with a similar prefix.

2. Compare the full string

   When you pick MET in a swap interface, open the token details and compare every character — at least the first six and the last six. Lookalike tokens often share the first few characters only.

3. Cross-check on an explorer

   Search the mint on a Solana explorer. The real token shows a total supply just under 1 billion and holders that include the published transparency wallets.

4. Check your wallet after the trade

   Open the token in your wallet and confirm the mint again. If you received something else, do not try to “swap it back” through unknown sites.

Get the mint right and the rest becomes much simpler. MET is a young, volatile token with a well-documented supply schedule and one genuine, fee-backed utility. Read the unlock table, watch how much is staked, and size any position so that a large drawdown — which MET has already shown it can deliver — would not hurt you.