What is Meteora? YZi Labs leads a $25.5 million investment, the new king of Solana Decentralized Finance goes live.

Meteora is a decentralized exchange and liquidity protocol built on Solana, aimed at creating the most efficient, composable, and sustainable liquidity infrastructure for DeFi applications. YZi Labs led a $25.5 million strategic funding round for Meteora, with participation from IDG Capital. Meteora has raised over $55 million in seed, Series A, and strategic rounds.

What is Meteora? From Mercurial Finance to Solana DeFi Infrastructure

Meteora is a decentralized exchange (DEX) and liquidity protocol built on the Solana blockchain, aimed at creating the most efficient, composable, and sustainable liquidity infrastructure for decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. The project was initially launched in 2021 under the name Mercurial Finance and was renamed Meteora in 2023, now supporting major Solana DEX aggregators like Jupiter Swap. The platform acts as a next-generation liquidity layer, enabling traders and projects to access dynamic, capital-efficient liquidity on Solana.

According to its documentation, Meteora's mission is to “establish the most dynamic liquidity pools for liquidity providers, launchpads, and token issuers, powering Solana's DeFi ecosystem using advanced mechanisms such as DLMM (Dynamic Liquidity Market Maker), DAMM, and dynamic vaults.” The platform addresses several ongoing challenges in decentralized liquidity and token markets, including dispersed liquidity across multiple pools, inefficient capital utilization with idle funds, high slippage during volatile markets, and unfair token issuance dominated by bots and insiders.

Meteora's dynamic liquidity infrastructure creates a self-sustaining and composable liquidity layer through DLMM technology, automated vault systems, and a fair launch mechanism, thereby changing the way liquidity operates in DeFi and benefiting all participants (projects, traders, liquidity providers, etc.). The design of the protocol fully leverages Solana's parallel execution model, 65,000+ TPS throughput, and low-cost transactions (around $0.00025) to support a high-frequency and high-liquidity trading environment.

DLMM Technology: A revolutionary innovation that is 40% more efficient than AMM

Dynamic Liquidity Market Maker (DLMM) is the flagship technology and core innovation of Meteora. DLMM is not a traditional AMM where liquidity is idle across all price ranges, but rather divides liquidity into small “price bins” - like shelves, where each bin stores tokens traded at a specific price. Liquidity providers choose which bins to fund, allowing them to concentrate their liquidity around the expected trading price.

Dynamic Fee Adjustment: If the market is calm, the fees are lower; if there is volatility, the fees will automatically increase. Compared to static AMM, this approach reduces slippage for volatile currency pairs by 40% and ensures better capital efficiency. Example: If you anticipate that the trading price of SOL will be between $100 and $110, you can only provide liquidity within that range, effectively earning fees rather than spreading funds all over.

DLMM allows LP to choose from three volatility strategies:

Spot Strategy: Provide a uniform distribution of liquidity within the selected price range, making it simpler, with a lower frequency of required rebalancing.

Curve Strategy: Concentrate liquidity around the current price to maximize capital efficiency, more effective in stable markets with little price fluctuation.

Trading Strategy: Allocate most of the capital to the ends of the selected price range, which is very useful for capturing larger price fluctuations in a highly volatile market.

Compared to CLMM (Uniswap v4) and AMM (PancakeSwap, SushiSwap, Curve), DLMM minimizes slippage by concentrating liquidity within specific price ranges, ensuring that traders can execute larger orders with less price impact. DLMM also allows LPs to allocate assets more efficiently by concentrating liquidity where it is most needed, thus better utilizing capital. The dynamic fee structure in DLMM enables liquidity providers to capitalize on market volatility, increasing their returns compared to traditional AMMs.

MET Token Economics and the Liquidity Distribution Mechanism of Innovation

The MET token is the native governance and utility asset of the Meteora DeFi ecosystem on the Solana blockchain. It underpins the governance, liquidity incentives, and protocol revenue sharing of the Meteora dynamic liquidity infrastructure. The token name is Meteora Token, the token symbol is MET, with a total supply of 1,000,000,000 MET (1 billion tokens), deployed on the Solana blockchain (SPL token standard). The TGE date is October 23, 2025, with a circulating supply of 48% (480,000,000 MET) at TGE.

Token Distribution Structure

Instant Circulation (48% - TGE Unlock):

Changing Stakeholders (Old Version): 20% (200 million)

Meteora Users and LP Incentives: 15% (150 million tokens)

Jupiter Ecosystem Stakers: 3% (30 million tokens)

Launchpad and Launchpool: 3% (30 million tokens)

Off-chain contributors and advisors: 2% (20 million)

M3M3 Stakeholders: 2% (20 million tokens)

CEX Liquidity and Market Making: 3% (30 million tokens)

Long-term belonging (52% - 6 Year Linear Release):

Core Team: 18% (180 million tokens)

Meteora Reserves/Treasury: 34% (34 million coins)

Meteora does not use traditional airdrops, but instead employs a liquidity allocation mechanism where recipients receive liquidity positions in the MET/SOL pool rather than direct tokens, automatically earning fee income from trading activities and having the ability to sell gradually to reduce sell pressure. This innovative mechanism is extremely rare in DeFi projects, transforming airdrop recipients from “short-term arbitrageurs” into “long-term liquidity providers.”

Vesting Structure Demonstrates Long-Term Design: The allocation for the team, advisors, and investors is subject to a multi-year vesting schedule, with an extended lock-up period. Community rewards and liquidity incentives are released at each period, promoting ongoing network participation. The core team has 18% that requires a 6-year linear release, showing the team's commitment to the project's long-term value.

Ben Chow and the Deep Connection with Jupiter

Meteora was founded by Ben Chow, a prominent developer and contributor in the Solana DeFi ecosystem, and also the co-founder of Solana's leading decentralized exchange aggregator, Jupiter Finance. Ben Chow leads Meteora's product architecture and release strategy, particularly its flagship innovations DLMM and DAMM. However, he resigned in February 2025 following the Libra memecoin controversy, although he insisted that neither he nor Meteora engaged in any financial misconduct.

Meow is the pseudonym of a Solana figure and the founder of Jupiter, known for building foundational DeFi tools and advocating for composable liquidity across Solana protocols. Currently responsible for overseeing Meteora's strategic direction and governance transition after Chow's resignation, and announced that Meteora will appoint independent compliance oversight and expand its DAO committee. M3M3 is a core developer and DAO contributor, focusing on developing features such as Alpha Vault and dynamic buy/sell fee modules.

The team combines deep technical expertise in Solana infrastructure with extensive experience in scaling major DeFi protocols to drive Meteora's vision for permanent, community-driven liquidity. Support from top institutions like DeFiance Capital and Signum Capital further validates Meteora's technological roadmap and market potential.

Dynamic Vault and M3M3 Holding Earn Mechanism

Dynamic Vault uses a smart rebalancing algorithm to move idle assets between lending protocols (such as Kamino, MarginFi, or Solend) every few minutes, thus automatically optimizing returns. The off-chain “gatekeeper” continuously monitors the market and rebalances deposits when better yield opportunities arise. These vaults provide “dual yield” - liquidity providers earn swap fees from trading activities and earn returns from lending integration. Users do not need to manage funds manually; the system automatically optimizes profit safety.

Meteora has launched M3M3, an innovative hold-to-earn platform that redefines the interaction between holders and meme coins. M3M3 aims to incentivize long-term participation, address common issues in speculative trading, and create a more stable ecosystem. M3M3 allows holders to stake their tokens and earn a portion of the fees from the locked liquidity pool. By encouraging staking, M3M3 reduces the likelihood of sudden sell-offs and promotes price stability. Fees collected from the locked liquidity are automatically reinvested into the pool, and this automatic compound interest feature accelerates the earnings of stakers over time.

M3M3 transforms token holders into active contributors. By earning rewards directly related to the performance of the liquidity pool, holders become more invested in the success of the token, fostering a sense of shared ownership. This design is highly innovative in the memecoin market, as it converts the speculative nature of memecoin trading into a long-term investment with sustainable returns.

Alpha Vault and Fair Launch Mechanism

During the token issuance period, sniper bots typically buy large amounts of tokens immediately, disrupting market stability. Meteora's Alpha Vaults address this issue by limiting snipers and allowing real users fair access, automatically locking initial liquidity for stability, and supporting controlled, anti-bot price discovery. This ensures that projects can launch in a fair and transparent manner while protecting their communities from exploitation.

The core difference between Meteora and Pump.fun lies in their fee mechanisms and security. Meteora achieves permanent fee generation by locking liquidity, allowing creators and top holders to receive ongoing rewards, while Pump.fun uses a fixed fee structure. In terms of security, Meteora prioritizes robust security measures and self-custody, with Alpha Vault ensuring fair token distribution during the issuance period, whereas Pump.fun has been scrutinized due to security vulnerabilities.

Meteora has also established strategic partnerships with Jupiter and Moonshot. Jupiter is one of the largest DeFi protocols on Solana, and by integrating Meteora, Jupiter has enhanced the visibility of the tokens and provided expanded trading opportunities for memecoins within the Solana ecosystem. Moonshot, as a leading memecoin trading application, has integrated Meteora's Memecoin pool and airdrops liquidity pool rewards daily to major holders.