01 · LandscapeThe three pool families you will meet
Every Meteora pool belongs to one of three engines, and the engine decides how your liquidity behaves, how fees are paid and what you hold as proof of ownership. Identify the engine before anything else.
DLMM (Dynamic Liquidity Market Maker) is the flagship. Liquidity sits in discrete price bins, you choose which bins to fill, and fees include a volatility-driven variable part. It is where most of Meteora’s volume and LP fees come from, and it rewards people who actively manage ranges.
DAMM v2 is a configurable constant-product AMM. Most pools are full-range, so you can deposit and largely forget about ranges. It is the engine behind many token launches, with fee schedulers that start high and decay, permanently locked liquidity, and the option to collect fees only in the quote token.
DAMM v1 is now a legacy product. Its pools still exist and still trade, including stable pools, but Meteora recommends DAMM v2 for anything new.
| Feature | DLMM | DAMM v2 | DAMM v1 (legacy) |
|---|---|---|---|
| You choose a price range | Yes | Pool-level option | No |
| Volatility-based fee | Yes | Optional | No |
| Fees auto-compound | No | Compounding pools only | See pool |
| Lending yield on idle funds | No | No | Via Dynamic Vaults |
| Position format | Program account | Token-2022 NFT | LP token |
| Hands-off friendly | Wide ranges only | Yes | Yes |
If you are brand new, a reasonable path is a wide DLMM position on a deep, well-known pair, or a full-range DAMM v2 position. Tight DLMM ranges earn more per dollar but demand attention; treat them as a second step once you understand how bins move.
02 · SelectionHow to evaluate a pool in five minutes
A pool’s headline APR is the least reliable number on its page. Look at what produces that APR, and whether it is likely to repeat.
The calculator at the top of this page uses the three inputs that matter most: TVL, 24-hour volume and the fee tier. With its default values (a $1.5M pool, $3M of daily volume, a 0.1% fee) the pool generates about $3,000 in fees per day, a fee-to-TVL ratio of 0.2% and a simple APR of roughly 73%. Volume equals twice the TVL each day, which is a healthy turnover for a liquid pair.
The questions to ask, in order
- Are both tokens what they claim to be? Compare each mint address with the project’s official channels. Copycat tokens with identical tickers are common on Solana.
- Is the volume real and repeating? A single day of frantic trading can make any pool look spectacular. Check several timeframes; the Meteora data API exposes 30-minute to 24-hour volume windows, and pool pages show recent history.
- Is the fee tier sensible for the pair? A blue-chip pair like SOL–USDC trades at very low fees: the main DLMM pool uses a bin step of 4 with a 0.04% base fee. A memecoin pool at 2% or more is pricing in much higher risk.
- How concentrated is the competition? In DLMM you share fees only with liquidity in the active bin. A pool with modest TVL but most of it parked far from the price can pay in-range LPs far more than its headline TVL suggests, and the reverse is also true.
- What happens if one token falls 80%? Run that through the impermanent loss calculator before you look at APR again.
03 · How-toAdding liquidity, step by step
The flow below follows a DLMM deposit, the most common case. A DAMM v2 deposit is the same minus the range step.
Fund and connect a wallet
Use a self-custody Solana wallet such as Phantom, Solflare or Backpack. Hold the tokens you plan to deposit plus spare SOL for rent and fees. Open meteora.ag by typing the address yourself or from a bookmark, then connect from the app header.
Find the pool
Search by token symbol or, better, by mint address. Most pairs have several pools with different bin steps and fee tiers. Sort by TVL or volume and open the one whose fee and depth suit you.
Verify the tokens
On the pool page, confirm both mints. Meteora’s own safety guide points to RugCheck, JupShield and Jupiter Organic Score as quick checks. If a token shows risk warnings, stop here.
Choose amounts and a shape
Enter how much of each token to deposit, or one side only for a one-sided position. Pick a liquidity shape: Spot spreads evenly, Curve concentrates near the price, Bid-Ask weights the edges. Our guide to DLMM strategy shapes covers which suits which market.
Set the price range
Drag the range or type min and max prices. The interface shows how many bins that covers. A default position spans 70 bins; dynamic positions can stretch to 1,400. Ranges over 69 bins add a refundable extension rent.
Review and sign
Check the estimated rent, the token split and the range once more, then approve in your wallet. A wide range may require more than one transaction. Wait for confirmation before closing the tab.
Confirm the position exists
Your position appears in the pool’s position panel with its range, current balances and unclaimed fees. Note your entry price and the date: you will need them later.
04 · CostsRent and the other costs nobody mentions
Solana charges rent to store data on-chain. On Meteora, rent is the cost most first-time LPs underestimate, especially on small positions.
| DLMM position rent | About 0.059 SOL per position, refunded when you close it |
|---|---|
| Extension rent | Charged when a range covers more than 69 bins; refundable |
| Bin array creation | About 0.075 SOL per bin array of 70 bins; non-refundable; paid only by the first LP to use those bins |
| New DAMM pool | Roughly 0.02–0.03 SOL or more of token account rent |
| Network fees | Base fee of 5,000 lamports per signature, plus any priority fee you set |
| Suggested buffer | Meteora advises keeping at least 0.05 SOL in your wallet |
The bin array cost is the trap. If you set a range far outside where anyone has provided liquidity before, you may be creating fresh bin arrays and paying for each one with no refund. On a popular pool near the current price, those arrays usually already exist and you pay nothing extra. The confirmation screen shows the rent before you sign; read it.
For a $200 position, 0.059 SOL of locked rent is a noticeable share of your capital even though it comes back. For a $20,000 position it is a rounding error. Size accordingly, and avoid opening and closing many tiny positions.
05 · UpkeepMonitoring, claiming and rebalancing
A pool position is not a savings account. The market moves under it every second, and in DLMM that movement decides whether you earn anything at all.
Is it in range?
When price leaves your range, the position holds 100% of one token and earns no fees. The position view shows where price sits relative to your bins.
Fees wait for you
DLMM fees accrue per position in both tokens and do not compound on their own. They stay claimable until you claim them, so there is no deadline.
Rebalance with intent
DLMM positions can be resized and rebalanced without closing. Meteora’s Zap tooling also supports rebalancing in a single transaction.
How often should you look? For a wide Spot range on a deep pair, once a day or a few times a week is plenty. For a tight Curve range on a volatile token, the honest answer is several times a day, or accept that you will be out of range much of the time.
Claiming has a small network cost each time, so batch it. Many LPs claim weekly or when unclaimed fees reach a meaningful amount. Claimed fees land in your wallet as ordinary tokens; reinvesting them means adding liquidity again by hand.
06 · ExitWithdrawing and closing to recover rent
Withdrawing and closing are two different things. Withdrawing removes tokens. Closing deletes the position account and returns its rent. Do both.
Claim outstanding fees and rewards
A DLMM position can only close after its liquidity, fees and rewards are cleared. Claim first so nothing blocks the close.
Withdraw liquidity
Choose to remove all liquidity, or a share of it, or only certain bins if you want to trim one side. You receive whatever token mix your bins hold at that moment.
Close the position
Once the position is empty, close it. This returns the position rent, about 0.059 SOL, and any extension rent to your wallet. Interfaces often combine withdraw and close into one action; check that the final step completed.
Record the result
Write down what you received, the fees you claimed over the life of the position, and the date. Compare that with what simply holding would have been worth.
Some positions cannot be withdrawn on demand. A DLMM position may carry a lock release point, and DAMM v2 supports vesting and permanent locks. Locked liquidity still earns fees, but if you see a lock on a pool you are joining, make sure you understand whose liquidity it applies to.
07 · SafetyRed flags that should make you walk away
Most losses in pools come not from clever exploits but from obvious warning signs that were ignored. Run this list before every new pool.
- The token mint does not match the one on the project’s official site or socials.
- The token still has freeze authority, or uses a Token-2022 transfer fee you did not expect.
- RugCheck, JupShield or Jupiter Organic Score flags the token, or the pool page shows risk warnings.
- APR is in the thousands but the pool is hours old and volume came from a single burst.
- A launch pool still has a very high scheduler fee, which hits you hard if you trade in early.
- Most of the token supply sits in a handful of wallets that could sell into your liquidity.
- You reached the pool through a link in a direct message or a search ad rather than meteora.ag itself.
Signs of a healthier pool
- Established tokens with verified mints
- Volume that repeats day after day
- Fee tier and bin step that match the pair’s volatility
- Liquidity spread across many LPs
Risks that never disappear
- Smart-contract risk, even with audits
- Impermanent loss, larger in tight ranges
- A token can go to zero regardless of fees
- Phishing sites copying Meteora’s interface
None of this is a guarantee. Good pools can still lose money in a sharp move, and audits reduce rather than remove contract risk. Start with an amount you could lose without stress, learn how your position reacts to a real price swing, then scale up only if the fees you actually collected justify it.
