01 · TVLTVL: what it measures, and what it does not
Total value locked is the dollar value of every token sitting in Meteora's pools, multiplied by a current price. It is the most quoted metric in DeFi and one of the easiest to over-interpret.
At the time of writing, DeFiLlama put Meteora's TVL at roughly a quarter of a billion dollars. Its breakdown is instructive: DLMM held well over half of that, DAMM v1 and the legacy Dynamic Vaults each held a similar smaller slice, DAMM v2 held less, and the Dynamic Bonding Curve showed zero. The parent figure is simply the sum of those child protocols.
Three things move TVL, and only one of them is about people trusting the protocol.
Deposits and withdrawals
LPs adding or removing liquidity. This is the signal people think TVL measures.
Token prices
If SOL falls 20%, every pool holding SOL loses value even if nobody withdraws. A large part of daily TVL change is just price.
Methodology
Which pools are counted, which tokens are priced and at what price. Change the rules and TVL changes overnight.
Before you read a TVL drop as an exodus, check what SOL and the main pool tokens did over the same period. And remember the DBC case: launch curves can carry heavy activity while contributing nothing to TVL, because a bonding curve holds no seeded AMM liquidity under DeFiLlama's rules.
02 · VolumeVolume and turnover: the activity signal
Trading volume is the dollar value of all swaps through Meteora's pools over a window. It is noisier than TVL, but it is the variable that actually pays LPs.
The day these notes were compiled illustrates the noise. DeFiLlama showed 24-hour volume about 90% higher than the previous day, while the seven-day average ran at roughly half of that single day's total. A writer who quoted only the 24-hour figure would have overstated Meteora's normal daily activity by nearly double. Monthly volume at the time was around $4B, and cumulative volume since launch passed $340B.
- Prefer 7-day or 30-day totals to a single day.
- Ask whether a spike comes from one token launch or broad activity.
- Compare against Solana-wide DEX volume to separate market mood from Meteora's share.
Turnover: volume divided by TVL
Divide 24-hour volume by TVL and you get turnover, a measure of how hard each deposited dollar is working. Meteora's DLMM data API reported about $176M of 24-hour volume on about $198M of TVL at the time of writing, a turnover near 0.9 times per day. A sleepy pool might turn over 0.05 times. A launch pool on its first day can turn over many times its TVL, which looks spectacular and rarely lasts.
03 · EconomicsFees versus revenue: who gets paid
Fees and revenue are often treated as synonyms. On Meteora they are very different numbers, and confusing them is the most common mistake in coverage of the protocol.
| Fees | Everything traders pay to swap. Mostly paid out to LPs. |
|---|---|
| Revenue | The protocol's cut of those fees, as set by each pool's protocol share. |
| DLMM share | Typically 10% protocol on standard pools (the main SOL and USDC pool showed 5%), 20% on launch pools; maximum 25%. |
| DAMM v2 and DBC share | 20% of the trading fee. |
| DAMM v1 share | 20% on standard pools; stable pools pay 100% to LPs. |
| Form | A basket of tokens (SOL, USDC, MET, pool assets), not auto-converted. |
The ratio between them is consistent across windows. Over the trailing year at the time of writing, DeFiLlama counted roughly $389M of fees and $46.8M of revenue, so about 12% of fees reached the protocol. The 30-day figures gave a similar ratio of about 13%. Meteora's own report for the first quarter of 2026 showed $105.9M of fees and $11.4M of revenue, close to 11%.
For an LP, fees are the number that matters, because that is the pool from which your share is paid. For anyone evaluating the MET token, revenue is closer to the relevant figure, and even that needs care: revenue is collected as a basket of tokens whose dollar value moves, and none of it is automatically distributed to token holders. Our MET token guide covers how buybacks and referral staking fit in.
04 · LP lensFee/TVL: the ratio LPs should watch
If you provide liquidity, fees divided by TVL is the closest thing Meteora has to a yield figure. It tells you how much fee income each dollar of liquidity earned over a period.
A worked example with the DLMM figures from Meteora's API at the time of writing: about $528K of fees in 24 hours on about $198M of TVL.
Daily fee/TVL
$528,000 ÷ $198,000,000 ≈ 0.27% per day across all DLMM pools combined.
Naive annualization
0.27% × 365 ≈ 97%, a simple APR before impermanent loss.
Reality check
That aggregate hides huge dispersion. A few volatile pools earn most of the fees; a major-pair pool may earn a fraction of the average, and memecoin pools may earn far more while their tokens fall.
The lesson is not that Meteora LPs earn 97% a year. It is that protocol-wide fee/TVL is a market-level temperature reading. To judge a specific position, compute the same ratio for that pool over at least a week, then subtract an honest estimate of impermanent loss for the price moves you expect.
05 · SourcesWhy DeFiLlama, Meteora's API and Fortune disagree
On the same day, three reputable sources can describe Meteora with numbers that look incompatible. Usually they are measuring slightly different things.
| Feature | DeFiLlama | Meteora API | Fortune |
|---|---|---|---|
| Same method for all protocols | Yes | No | Partial |
| Pool-level detail | Partial | Yes | No |
| Revenue split out | Yes | No | Partial |
| Live, frequent refresh | Yes | Yes | No |
TVL: roughly $257M versus roughly $290M
On the day we compared them, DeFiLlama showed about $257M for Meteora while Meteora's three data APIs (DLMM, DAMM v2 and DAMM v1) added up to about $290M. The DLMM figures alone differed by roughly $50M. Plausible reasons include different price sources for long-tail tokens, aggregators excluding tokens without reliable prices, and different snapshot times. We cannot attribute the gap precisely, which is exactly why a figure should always carry its source.
Fees: $389M versus $800M
Fortune's Crypto 100 ranked Meteora eighth and cited about $800M in annualized fees as of mid-2026. DeFiLlama counted roughly $389M over the trailing twelve months. An annualized figure usually extrapolates a recent period, so if that period was busier than the year as a whole, the result will be higher. Fortune does not publish a method we could verify, so treat its number as a ranking input rather than an accounting figure.
Volume: cumulative comparisons
Cumulative totals line up better. Meteora's API reported about $324B of all-time DLMM volume and about $12B for DAMM v2, while DeFiLlama's all-time total for the parent protocol was about $342B. Pool counts are another trap: DAMM v2 lists well over a million pools against roughly 167,000 for DLMM, mostly because every launch and graduation creates a new pool, most of which become inactive.
06 · ContextMeteora in Solana context
Absolute numbers mean little without a benchmark. The useful comparisons are Meteora's share of Solana activity and its trend over quarters.
At the time of writing, total Solana DEX volume ran at about $57B over thirty days, and Meteora's DLMM accounted for about $3.4B of it, around 6%. Several venues ranked higher, including PumpSwap, Orca and Raydium's AMM. Activity on Meteora has swung sharply with the memecoin cycle, which is a reminder that launch-driven volume is cyclical.
Meteora's quarterly reports add the trend view. The first-quarter 2026 report showed volume of $19.5B, down 36% on the previous quarter, and fees down about half, with DLMM producing 86% of volume and 54% of fees. For context on how Meteora's figures stack up against other venues, see our comparison of Meteora, Raydium and Orca.
07 · MethodA checklist for reading any Meteora metric
- Name the source. DeFiLlama, Meteora's API and a media ranking are not interchangeable.
- Name the window. 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days and all-time tell different stories.
- Separate fees from revenue. LPs care about the first, token analysis about the second.
- Adjust TVL for price. Check SOL's move before reading flows into a TVL change.
- Distrust single-day spikes. Compare with the 7-day average.
- Go to pool level for decisions. Protocol averages hide extreme dispersion.
- Look for the timestamp. Meteora's API carries a refresh time, and its data appears to update hourly.
Used this way, Meteora's public data is unusually rich: every pool, fee and volume figure is queryable in real time. The risk is not a lack of numbers but a surplus of them, quoted without context. If you take one habit away, make it this: every figure you rely on should come with a source, a window and a timestamp. The live panel at the top of this page shows its sources for exactly that reason, and it hides any block that fails to load rather than show a stale number.
