MET Token Valuation Analysis: Reasonable Pricing Range for Meteora TGE

Meteora is about to launch its MET token public offering (TGE), an important event in the Solana ecosystem DEX field. What is the fair value range for MET? This article compares similar projects, analyzes Meteora’s revenue structure and market advantages, and provides a systematic valuation framework.

Development History of Meteora and MET Design

Meteora was born in February 2023, developed by the Jupiter team, the largest DEX aggregator in the Solana ecosystem. This new protocol is a complete rebuild of the previous project Mercurial Finance—why restart? Because a significant portion of Mercurial’s native token MER holdings are related to FTX/Alameda, and the project decided to achieve a “clean restart” through a new platform and new token.

In the initial MET allocation, the team fulfilled its promise to old users: 15% allocated to Mercurial stakers, 5% used to establish Mercurial’s reserve fund, and another 15% gradually released through a DEX incentive program (starting from late January 2024). Notably, at launch, 48% of MET supply was already in circulation, which is relatively high among major Solana protocols.

The initial liquidity adopted a special design: 10% of the total supply was locked as seed capital for a dynamic AMM pool, with an initial price of $0.5 per MET. As trading volume expands, liquidity can support MET’s value to reach a valuation of $750 million. It’s worth noting that this early liquidity pool was single-sided—early participants exchanged stablecoins for MET rather than the reverse—and the pool fee rate was set high but would significantly decrease over time.

Meteora’s Competitive Advantages: From Fragmentation to Vertical Integration

The DEX sector has long faced a structural problem: lacking a true moat. For example, when PumpSwap decided to route generated tokens to its own AMM, Raydium’s trading volume and revenue sharply declined. This highlights Meteora’s core strategy—vertical integration to address this vulnerability.

Meteora’s integration path includes: first, leveraging Jupiter as the user gateway. Jupiter has become the main on-chain portal for retail users in the Solana ecosystem, with deep integration providing natural traffic advantages. Second, close cooperation with launchpad ecosystems, including partnerships with Moonshot in August 2024, and subsequent collaborations with Believe, BAGS, Jup Studio, and others. These launchpads are primary channels for token issuance, channeling new token trading volume into Meteora for mutual ecosystem benefit.

Key Revenue Metrics and Memecoin-Driven Model

Data shows that Meteora’s revenue is highly concentrated in specific pools. Over the past 30 days, it achieved a total fee income of $8.8 million, with weekly average income around $1.5 million—even during periods of low on-chain activity, maintaining a basic revenue base.

However, a risk factor must be noted: over 90% of revenue comes from Memecoin trading pairs. These pools tend to have high volatility and strong speculative attributes, often with higher fee rates. In contrast, pools with SOL-stablecoin, project tokens, Liquid Staking Tokens (LST), and stablecoin pairs have lower fee rates and contribute less revenue. This indicates Meteora’s profitability heavily depends on Memecoin market activity. When Memecoin trading enthusiasm wanes, Meteora’s overall income could decline significantly.

MET Valuation Framework: Benchmarking Against Peers

To estimate a reasonable value range for MET, we selected Raydium (RAY) and Orca (ORCA)—two mainstream DEXs in the Solana ecosystem with comparable characteristics.

The key metric is Price-to-Sales ratio (P/S). Observing RAY and ORCA’s trading performance over the past year reveals a pattern:

ORCA performs steadily: its P/S ratio remains around 6x across different periods, reflecting the market’s valuation of a mature, stable DEX.

RAY’s valuation fluctuates: in the first half of 2025, RAY’s median P/S reached 9x, higher than ORCA. Later, as revenue declined, its P/S ratio showed greater volatility. These differences may reflect market expectations of future growth potential.

Implication for Meteora: Given the current Solana ecosystem and DEX sector valuation context, a new strong DEX should have a P/S ratio between 6x and 10x. This is based on the median levels derived from the two comparable projects’ actual trading prices.

Estimating MET’s Value Range from Revenue

Based on Meteora’s data over the past 30 days, its annualized revenue could range from $75 million to $115 million, depending on the averaging period and how Memecoin-related anomalies are handled.

Applying the above P/S valuation multiples:

• Conservative scenario (P/S=6x, annualized revenue $75 million): valuation about $4.5 billion
• Median scenario (P/S=8x, revenue $100 million): about $8 billion
• Optimistic scenario (P/S=10x, revenue $115 million): about $11.5 billion

Therefore, the reasonable trading valuation range for MET at launch should be between $4.5 billion and $11.5 billion, with $4.5–8 billion being more defensible.

Valuation Boundaries and Risk Warnings

It’s important to note that valuations exceeding $10 billion are relatively expensive compared to peers. Unless Meteora achieves significant breakthroughs in:

1. Increasing non-Memecoin pool revenue share from 10% to over 30%
2. Continuously expanding trading volume through launchpad collaborations and Jupiter integration
3. Becoming an indispensable liquidity hub within the Solana ecosystem

Conversely, valuations above $20 billion lack solid foundation, implying the market has fully priced in an ideal scenario, and any execution deviations could lead to sharp corrections.

The actual trading price of MET will be influenced by market sentiment, initial launchpad participation, and liquidity depth in the first week post-issuance. From a fundamental and peer comparison perspective, the $4.5–11.5 billion range provides a reference framework for investors.