Meteora is即将 TGE, what is the fair value of $MET?

Written by: Luke Leasure & Carlos

Translated by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

This week Meteora is set to launch its token MET: where might its fair value lie?

Indices

The week started strong, with BTC rising 7% from last Friday's low. During Monday’s trading session, Launchpad was the best-performing sector, while AI saw the largest decline—reversing their relative strength and weakness over the past week.

On a weekly chart, Launchpad’s recent strength has made it a relative winner, second only to gold, which once again approached all-time highs at Monday’s close. Overall, most indices remain negative on the weekly timeframe following the historic liquidation event. Within the Launchpad index, AUCTION—a BSC-based project—was the only asset showing positive returns over the week, up 46%.

While short-term performance shows some gains, the monthly chart reveals that nearly all cryptocurrency indices have declined over the past 30 days. The October 10 liquidation event led to broad weakness, with only gold, crypto miners, AI, and equity indices standing out as strong performers.

The VIX Index has dropped significantly, falling to 18 after spiking to 29 Friday morning. Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indices rose during Monday’s session, closing just below their all-time highs.

Market Update

ETF flows remain muted and negative. Monday’s data showed $40 million in outflows from BTC ETFs, $145 million from ETH ETFs, and $27 million in inflows to SOL ETFs. On a weekly basis, ETFs saw total net outflows of $1.5 billion last week, reversing part of the strong accumulation seen at the start of October. SOL ETF was the only product showing net inflows, adding $14 million.

Among ETH DATCOs, BMNR leads by a wide margin. The entity currently holds 3,236,014 ETH—more than the combined holdings of all other ETH DATCOs—and accounts for 2.67% of ETH’s total supply. Notably, BMNR has steadily accumulated nearly 70% more ETH since late August, while most other ETH DATCOs have held steady. In this process, BMNR’s market share of ETH held by DATCOs has grown from 50% to nearly 65% today.

This trend is also reflected in ETH DATCO trading volume. BMNR accounts for 60–85% of ETH DATCO trading volume, making its shares the most liquid. This liquidity profile makes the entity preferable among larger allocators and reduces the marginal price impact of ATM offerings. BMNR appears to be the clear winner in the ETH treasury company space.

In the case of SOL DATCOs, the picture is less clear. FORD remains the largest holder, with nearly its entire position acquired through PIPE issuance. Despite authorizing a $4 billion ATM program, the entity has not meaningfully increased its holdings via ATM offerings.

Growth in holdings remains sluggish, with HSDT recently moving into second place.

Trading volume among SOL DATCOs tells a similar story. While DFDV once dominated volume in the space, activity is now more evenly distributed among top names. Although FORD holds about 43% of SOL held by DATCOs, it accounts for only about 10% of trading volume in the sector, indicating relatively low turnover. This data may help explain why so little SOL has been accumulated through FORD’s ATM program.

While BMNR is emerging as the clear leader in the ETH space, the frontrunner in the SOL ecosystem may still be undecided. Over the next month, trading volume is expected to become increasingly concentrated among top players.

Meteora’s TGE: What Is the Fair Value of MET?

The highly anticipated Meteora TGE will take place on Thursday, October 23. Unlike recent projects conducting ICOs, Meteora did not raise funds prior to TGE. Instead, it will distribute tokens via an airdrop to eligible recipients, including Mercurial stakeholders, Meteora liquidity providers, JUP stakers, and Launchpad partners. Airdrop recipients will default receive unlocked MET, or can opt to provide liquidity at launch to earn trading fees.

Meteora was launched in February 2023 by the team behind Jupiter, Solana’s largest DEX aggregator and perpetual contracts platform. When Meteora launched, its predecessor protocol Mercurial Finance was discontinued. The shutdown of Mercurial and its governance token was due to a large amount of MER being linked to FTX/Alameda, leading the team to conclude that the best course of action was to rebuild the platform with a new token.

As early as 2023, the team announced that 20% of the MET supply would be distributed to Mercurial stakeholders at TGE. As shown below, the team has upheld its original commitment, allocating 15% to Mercurial stakeholders and 5% to Mercurial reserves. Additionally, the DEX has run a points program since January 31, 2024, which will collectively distribute 15% of MET. At launch, 48% of the MET supply will be in circulation—a high float compared to other notable token launches in the Solana ecosystem.

Source: https://met.meteora.ag/

As previously mentioned, 10% of the total supply will be used to bootstrap initial liquidity via a dynamic AMM pool, starting at a price of $0.50 and scaling up to a $7.5 billion valuation. The initial liquidity pool is one-sided, with early buyers exchanging USDC for MET. Note that pool fees start high but decline sharply over time according to a fee schedule.

Source: https://met.meteora.ag/

Valuation Analysis

DEXs, especially on Solana, lack significant moats due to the absence of proprietary front-ends. A prime example is Raydium, which lost millions in trading volume and revenue when Pump decided to route graduating tokens to its own AMM, PumpSwap. Meteora aims to mitigate this by vertically integrating distribution through Jupiter and select Launchpad partners.

As noted, the DEX works closely with the Jupiter team, which has become a go-to gateway for retail users conducting on-chain trades. Additionally, Meteora partnered with Moonshot in August 2024 to launch a Launchpad, gradually adding new partners such as Believe, BAGS, and Jup Studio. The chart below shows that in recent weeks, Launchpad activity has contributed between $200,000 and $800,000 per week in revenue to Meteora, with most traffic coming from Believe and BAGS.

From a financial standpoint, Meteora generated $8.8 million in revenue from all its pools over the past 30 days, maintaining a weekly revenue run rate close to $1.5 million even during periods of relatively low on-chain activity. Notably, over 90% of Meteora’s revenue comes from Memecoin pools, which typically carry higher fee tiers compared to SOL-stablecoin, project token, LST, and stablecoin-stablecoin pools.

For valuation, we can use Raydium and Orca as comparables. The chart below shows the price-to-sales (P/S) ratios of RAY and ORCA year-to-date based on 30-day annualized data. We observe that until September, both assets traded at relatively similar multiples, after which RAY began trading at a premium. From a broader perspective, both assets have a median P/S ratio of around 9x in 2025.

The table below compares RAY and ORCA P/S ratios across different lookback periods. We see ORCA trading consistently across all annualized timeframes at around 6x P/S. In contrast, RAY has become more expensive in recent months despite declining revenue. For Meteora, we estimate its annualized revenue ranges between approximately $75 million and $115 million depending on the lookback period.

Finally, the chart below illustrates potential valuations for MET across various revenue and P/S ratio scenarios. Based on historical pricing of RAY and ORCA, a P/S range of 6x to 10x is most likely. Therefore, a reasonable expectation is for MET to trade at a post-launch valuation between $450 million and $1.1 billion. Note that valuations above $1 billion begin to appear somewhat rich relative to peers, and above $2 billion MET would almost certainly be overvalued unless it can materially increase its revenue run rate.