When an unfamiliar ticker shows up with $33M in daily volume, the instinct for most traders is: another meme, get in before the dump. MET is a different story. Behind this token sits one of Solana's most serious liquidity protocols, a deep connection to the Jupiter ecosystem, and a scandal the team couldn't fully bury. Let's break it all down.
What Is Meteora — and Why Liquidity Matters
Meteora is a DeFi protocol on Solana built around one core mission: providing liquidity for the entire ecosystem. Its flagship product is the DLMM (Dynamic Liquidity Market Maker). Standard AMM pools spread liquidity across the full price range — most of it just sits idle. DLMM concentrates liquidity where trading actually happens and dynamically adjusts fees based on market volatility. Liquidity providers earn more; traders deal with less slippage.
That might sound like marketing copy. In practice, Meteora has become one of Solana's primary liquidity sources. This is infrastructure, not a narrative play.
From Mercurial to Meteora: A Survival Story
The project didn't start in 2025. Mercurial Finance was one of Solana's earliest stablecoin AMMs, launched during the ecosystem's boom years. When FTX collapsed in November 2022 and took half the Solana ecosystem down with it, the team didn't disappear. Instead, they rebranded to Meteora and relaunched with a sharper focus on dynamic liquidity.
Surviving the FTX collapse isn't a small signal — most projects from that era simply vanished.
The Team, the Money, and the Scandal
Meteora was co-founded by Zhen Hoe Yong, who has been building the protocol from day one. Founder Ben Chow simultaneously served as co-founder of Jupiter, Solana's largest DEX aggregator. In February 2025, Chow stepped away from Meteora. His name had surfaced in connection with the Libra token scandal — an Argentine political meme-coin that was pumped and dumped on retail. Direct involvement was never proven, but the reputational damage stuck.
Operational leadership has since shifted to "Meow" — another Jupiter co-founder and one of the most respected builders in the Solana ecosystem.
"In crypto, 'co-founder departed' can mean anything from personal disagreements to a strategic move to distance the project from toxic associations." — Dok OG
The protocol is functional. The scandal is real. Keep both facts in mind at the same time.
TGE: Loud, Controversial, 48% Circulating on Day One
MET launched on October 23, 2025. Total supply: 1 billion tokens. It's a governance token — holders vote on protocol parameters, fee distribution, and development direction.
The controversial part: 48% of total supply entered circulation immediately on launch day. That's a lot.
What this means in practice:
- Immediate sell pressure from allocation holders looking to take profits
- No "wait for the unlock in a year" illusion — the overhang is front-loaded
- The market knew this in advance, and the token hasn't gone to zero
Scary on paper. Less catastrophic in reality — but the risk is genuine.
Price, Volume, and Why AIHermes 4.0 Flagged MET
MET is currently trading around $0.167 with roughly $33.2M in daily volume. This isn't a 24-hour pump-and-forget situation. Consistent volume above $10M/day is the threshold where the AIHermes 4.0 algorithm considers a coin tradeable with real position sizing.
Minimum position sizes for assets like this start at $20,000. This isn't a $50 retail lottery ticket — it's liquidity-aware trading with proper entries, managed stops, and exits without meaningful slippage.
The Honest Risk/Reward Balance
What works in MET's favor:
- Real product with proven mechanics — DLMM solves a genuine problem
- Survived the FTX collapse without abandoning the project
- Jupiter ecosystem ties — one of Solana's strongest narratives
- $33M daily volume enables clean entries and exits
- Flagged as tradeable by AIHermes 4.0
What could kill the position:
- 48% circulating supply from day one — the overhang is real
- Reputational drag from the Libra scandal and Ben Chow's departure
- Serious competition: Orca (Whirlpool) and Raydium are mature, battle-tested, and have loyal userbases
- Fresh TGE means no historical support levels — technical analysis works on a very short timeframe
- Solana network risks: congestion under load, ecosystem sentiment dependency
Where MET Sits Among Competitors
Direct competitors on Solana are Orca (concentrated liquidity via Whirlpool) and Raydium (the ecosystem's oldest AMM, tightly integrated with OpenBook). Meteora isn't trying to displace them head-on. DLMM fills the dynamic fee-adjustment niche that competitors handle less elegantly.
If Raydium is the default liquidity exchange, Meteora is the intelligent fee router. Both niches matter to the ecosystem.
Technical Picture
At ~$0.167 with a fresh TGE, support and resistance levels are still forming. The key observation: volume has held consistently above $10M/day — that's a live market, not a one-time airdrop spike. As long as price holds above the initial listing zone and volume stays healthy, there's a tradeable structure. A breakdown below that zone paired with shrinking volume is the signal to exit — not average down.
Takeaway
MET is not a meme coin. It's the governance token of real DeFi infrastructure that has been providing liquidity to the Solana ecosystem since 2022. DLMM works, the volume is genuine, and the Jupiter connection carries weight — check the altcoin season index and Solana is consistently in the conversation.
But there's no fairy tale here either. A fresh TGE with 48% immediately circulating, reputational damage from the Libra scandal, and live competition from Orca and Raydium aren't reasons to panic — they're reasons not to ignore the risks.
AIHermes 4.0 has MET on its radar. Positions from $20,000, with strict risk management.
Trade the infrastructure, not the rumor.
Originally published on buysellstyle.com
