Meteora Looks Cheap at $180M. But Is Its Revenue Telling the Whole Story?

One Solana liquidity protocol generates more revenue than Raydium at a fraction of its valuation. Following the money reveals why that discount may not be as straightforward as it looks.

On May 19, Meteora made a decision that could have sent liquidity providers looking for the exit.

The Solana-based decentralized exchange doubled the protocol’s share of trading fees collected through its Dynamic Liquidity Market Maker, or DLMM, from 5% to 10%.

For liquidity providers, that meant giving up a larger portion of the fees they earned. In an industry where capital can move between protocols in seconds, charging more is often a risky experiment.

But something unusual happened.

Almost nothing.

Meteora’s subsequent analysis found that depositor retention barely moved, rising from a historical baseline of 48.4% to 48.5% across the fee change. Meanwhile, protocol revenue per unit of DLMM trading volume nearly doubled.

Meteora had effectively increased its cut without triggering an immediate exodus.

That small victory matters more than it might sound.

Because six months later, Meteora’s MET token carries a market cap of roughly $180 million, while rival Raydium’s RAY commands close to $486 million.

Yet Meteora has recently generated more protocol revenue.

For investors searching for overlooked crypto projects, the discrepancy looks tempting.

Meteora has a productive business, real users, substantial trading activity, and a token valued at less than half that of its better-known competitor.

The ingredients of a hidden gem appear to be there.

But following the money through Meteora’s financial reports reveals a more complicated possibility.

The protocol might be undervalued. That doesn’t necessarily mean its token is.

A Smaller Valuation, but More Revenue Than Raydium

Meteora isn’t a speculative infrastructure project waiting for customers to arrive.

Its DLMM pools help liquidity providers concentrate capital around specific trading prices, while dynamic fees adjust to market conditions. The protocol also supports token launches, automated liquidity pools, and newer trading products.

Some of that infrastructure has become a significant part of Solana’s trading economy.

According to Meteora’s H1 2026 Token Holders’ Report, the protocol processed $32.1 billion in trading volume during the first six months of 2026.

Those trades generated $164.3 million in fees, of which $18.2 million accrued to Meteora as protocol revenue.

That last distinction is crucial.

Most trading fees do not belong to the protocol. They flow to liquidity providers and other eligible participants.

Meteora’s recognized share was 11.1% during the first half, up from 9.6% in the preceding six months.

Even as trading activity weakened, the protocol improved its ability to monetize the activity that remained.

The valuation comparison becomes particularly revealing when we look at more recent numbers.

As of November 8, CoinMarketCap placed MET around $183 million in market cap, while Raydium stood near $486 million.

Over the latest 30-day period, DefiLlama’s Meteora dashboard recorded roughly $2.69 million in protocol revenue.

Raydium’s corresponding figures showed about $1.96 million.

Meteora therefore generated roughly 37% more protocol revenue while carrying only 38% of Raydium’s market cap.

Ravel calculated the valuation multiples by dividing each token’s market cap by its latest 30-day protocol revenue multiplied by 12.

The results were striking.

Meteora traded at roughly 5.7 times annualized protocol revenue.

Raydium traded at around 20.7 times.

By that measure, Raydium’s valuation multiple was more than three times Meteora’s.

But there is an important limitation.

A protocol’s revenue is not the same as net profit, and owning its native token is not equivalent to owning shares in the business.

Before calling MET undervalued, we need to establish how much of that revenue actually reaches the token.

And first, there is another problem with the numbers.

Two Revenue Reports, One $4.6 Million Difference

Meteora publishes financial reports that resemble something investors might expect from a public company.

They detail trading activity, fee sources, revenue composition, product development, and token distribution.

That level of transparency is unusual enough in crypto to deserve recognition.

But comparing the project’s own financial statements with DefiLlama produces a discrepancy that is difficult to ignore.

Meteora reported $18.20 million in protocol revenue for H1 2026, using Blockworks Research data.

Adding DefiLlama’s historical monthly revenue observations for the same six-month period produces roughly $22.81 million.

Ravel reconstructed the comparison:

The difference is approximately $4.61 million, or 25.3% of the revenue disclosed in Meteora’s report.

More importantly, the discrepancy is not distributed evenly.

Nearly $5 million of it comes from Q1, while DefiLlama’s Q2 figure is slightly lower than Meteora’s.

That pattern raises an obvious question.

What exactly is each provider counting?

The answer could involve differences in transaction coverage, fee classification, protocol integrations, historical revisions, or the timing of revenue recognition.

Meteora operates several products, including DLMM, DAMM, and Dynamic Bonding Curve infrastructure, each with different fee structures.

A difference in how those revenue streams are classified could materially affect the final number.

However, the public materials reviewed by Ravel do not establish which methodology explains the $4.61 million difference.

Nor does the discrepancy demonstrate inaccurate accounting or misconduct.

Both datasets describe substantial economic activity. The problem is that they do not yet reconcile.

And when a token’s investment thesis depends heavily on how cheaply it trades relative to revenue, a 25% difference in reported historical revenue is hardly a rounding error.

It is a reason to be cautious about the valuation multiple.

The More Interesting Business Is Hiding Beneath the Memecoin Frenzy

There is another way Meteora could look cheaper than it really is.

Its revenue is highly sensitive to speculative trading.

The project’s H1 report disclosed that tokens originating from Pump.fun generated $50.2 million in DLMM trading fees during the first six months of 2026.

That represented roughly half of all DLMM liquidity-pool fees for the period.

In other words, a meaningful portion of Meteora’s business depends on the same volatile token-trading economy that has made Solana famous.

This creates an unusual relationship between the two platforms.

Pump.fun helps launch speculative tokens. When some of those assets attract significant trading interest, liquidity providers can create positions on Meteora to capture the resulting activity.

Meteora earns a share of the fees.

The business can benefit from volatility even when the underlying tokens have little long-term economic value.

As Ravel explored in its earlier investigation into Pump.fun’s trading fees and boycott, substantial trading revenue does not necessarily mean the underlying activity is stable or that its economic benefits are distributed evenly.

Meteora also faces a related problem.

The more intense the speculative trading, the greater its potential fee income.

But what happens when traders move on?

The H1 report offers an encouraging clue.

In January, pools older than 90 days accounted for only about 15% of DLMM trading fees.

By May and June, their contribution had increased to roughly 36%.

The report also indicated that fees from those mature pools remained relatively stable in absolute terms as activity in newer pools weakened.

This matters because it suggests Meteora has something beyond a constant stream of freshly launched tokens.

Older liquidity pools continued attracting economic activity even as the market cooled.

Still, the rising percentage should not be mistaken for explosive growth in mature-pool revenue.

Part of the increase simply reflects the collapse of activity elsewhere.

Meteora’s established business showed resilience. It did not establish that the entire platform was growing.

There is also a smaller, potentially meaningful diversification opportunity.

Tokenized equities generated $1.47 billion in DLMM trading volume during H1, accounting for 5.1% of the product’s volume.

That segment remains far smaller than Meteora’s speculative-token business, but it demonstrates that its liquidity infrastructure can serve markets beyond memecoins.

The hidden-gem argument becomes stronger if those less speculative markets continue expanding.

For now, however, the project remains significantly exposed to the trading cycles that drive Solana’s most volatile assets.

What Happens When We Remove the Hottest Months?

A project can look remarkably cheap when investors value it using one unusually profitable month.

Meteora provides a useful example.

DefiLlama recorded roughly $6.46 million in protocol revenue during September 2026.

The following month brought about $3.72 million.

That is a decline of more than 42% in just one month.

Rather than assume September’s performance represents normal business conditions, Ravel constructed a more conservative scenario.

We excluded January and September, two particularly strong months, and examined the seven-month period from February through August 2026.

During those months, Meteora generated an average of roughly $1.73 million in protocol revenue per month.

Annualizing that figure produces about $20.74 million.

Against a market cap near $183 million, the resulting valuation multiple is approximately 8.8 times annualized revenue.

That is considerably less spectacular than the 5.7 times suggested by the latest 30-day figures.

But it still leaves Meteora looking interesting relative to Raydium on a protocol-revenue basis.

There is a catch.

Even this calculation assumes the selected months provide a useful representation of sustainable activity.

They might not.

Crypto trading volumes, fee rates, competition, and token-launch cycles can change quickly.

The calculation is a stress test of the valuation narrative, not a forecast of future revenue.

It also tells us something important.

Meteora doesn’t need another September-sized trading frenzy to operate a revenue-generating business.

Whether that business makes MET a bargain is a different question.

Follow the Fees, and the Discount Starts to Disappear

This is where Meteora’s hidden-gem thesis encounters its toughest test.

DefiLlama distinguishes between protocol revenue and holders’ revenue, the latter describing economic value attributed to tokenholder-related mechanisms under its methodology.

Meteora’s latest 30-day holders-revenue figure was roughly $428,000.

Raydium’s was about $1.26 million.

That changes the comparison dramatically.

Meteora generated more protocol revenue, but Raydium recorded nearly three times as much holders revenue.

Ravel annualized those 30-day figures and divided them by each token’s market capitalization.

For MET, the resulting ratio was roughly 2.8%.

For RAY, it was about 3.1%.

Suddenly, the enormous valuation gap looks much smaller.

There is an important methodological warning here: the mechanisms behind these numbers differ.

Raydium’s token-related value flows prominently involve buybacks, while Meteora has used buybacks and more recently introduced referral staking rewards. The reported figures should not be treated as directly comparable cash dividends or guaranteed investment yields.

Nevertheless, the contrast reveals something useful.

The market may be valuing the economic benefits that reach each token more closely than the total revenue generated by each protocol.

Meteora’s business might produce more revenue per dollar of market cap.

But that alone does not establish that MET holders receive more value.

This is a familiar problem in crypto.

A successful application can generate substantial income, while its native token captures only a limited portion of that success.

Ravel encountered a similar distinction while examining GEODNET’s revenue and token economics.

The critical question is not merely whether the business works.

It is whether the token has a durable mechanism to benefit from that success.

Meteora Has Started Sharing Fees, but There Is a Catch

Meteora is not ignoring that problem.

Its Referral Staking program, launched in July, creates a mechanism through which eligible MET stakers can receive USDC rewards linked to activity generated by referred liquidity providers.

In an October 17 governance update, Meteora reported more than 128 million MET staked across the program’s first three cycles.

The project also disclosed more than $39 million in trading fees generated by referred users and over $1.9 million in USDC rewards, including estimated third-cycle rewards.

Those are meaningful signs of participation.

They suggest MET has acquired a use beyond speculation and discretionary treasury management.

But the economics are not as simple as buying a token and collecting a share of the business.

Starting with Cycle 4, stakers must generate at least $10 in fees from eligible liquidity positions opened during the cycle to qualify for their staking rewards.

Failing to meet that requirement results in the forfeiture of the cycle’s staking rewards, although the underlying staked MET remains intact.

That changes the incentive structure.

Stakers must participate in liquidity provision, which exposes them to trading risks, inventory changes, and potentially impermanent loss.

The program rewards active participation rather than granting every MET holder an automatic share of protocol income.

And there is a broader distinction that investors should understand.

Meteora’s MiCA white paper explicitly states that MET holders do not receive ownership, governance, or profit-sharing rights in the Foundation, protocol, or affiliated entities.

The token can provide access to ecosystem functions and reward programs.

It does not represent an equity claim on Meteora’s earnings.

That legal and economic distinction matters enormously when using business-style valuation metrics to describe a cryptocurrency as undervalued.

The Buyback Program Has Another Complication

Meteora has also attempted to connect protocol revenue to MET demand through token buybacks.

Its H1 report disclosed that the project spent $1 million purchasing 7,007,042 MET during Q1 2026, at an average price of $0.1427.

Those purchases brought the cumulative amount bought back since October 2025 to roughly 36 million MET.

By June 30, the designated buyback holdings had grown to approximately 38.8 million MET, including tokens accumulated through liquidity positions.

The project identifies its MET buyback wallet on Solscan, allowing the public to inspect the designated address.

But the report contains a revealing detail.

Meteora executed no additional buybacks during Q2.

The entire $1 million spent in H1 came from Q1 activity.

This does not mean the program has ended. Nor does it establish that no purchases occurred after June.

Ravel has not independently reconciled subsequent transactions into a complete post-Q2 buyback total.

The distinction matters because buybacks are discretionary.

Meteora’s Blockworks Token Transparency filing describes revenue-funded purchases as a strategic decision made after considering the resources needed to grow the protocol.

There is no automatic commitment requiring a fixed portion of revenue to purchase MET every month.

The bought-back tokens are also held rather than automatically burned.

That gives Meteora flexibility in managing its reserves.

But it also means investors cannot simply multiply protocol revenue by an assumed buyback percentage and treat the result as guaranteed demand.

The recent history offers a useful reminder: a protocol can report meaningful earnings while choosing not to buy back its token during a particular quarter.

A Profitable Quarter, Then Less Visibility Into the Treasury

There is another financial disclosure worth examining.

Meteora’s Q1 2026 Token Holders’ Report reported $25.4 million in cash inflows and $7 million in cash outflows.

That produced a positive net change in cash of $18.3 million.

It was an encouraging result during a period when trading activity had weakened.

However, cash inflows should not be confused with newly earned protocol revenue.

Meteora attributed part of the improvement to an automated mechanism that converted previously accumulated trading-fee assets into more readily usable treasury holdings.

In other words, stronger cash realization did not necessarily mean the protocol generated an equivalent amount of new revenue during the quarter.

The distinction becomes especially important when looking at the next report.

In August, Meteora announced that future half-year reports would no longer publish the detailed cash-flow statement and treasury breakdown previously provided.

The project cited security concerns, arguing that detailed disclosure of reserve addresses and balances can attract attacks.

That is a plausible concern in an industry where treasury compromises are costly.

But the decision also makes it harder for outside investors to determine how much liquid capital the project has available for operating expenses, growth initiatives, and discretionary buybacks.

The protocol remains unusually transparent about several operating metrics.

Its financial transparency, however, is no longer equally detailed across every part of the business.

The Supply Problem Hasn’t Gone Away

Even if Meteora continues generating millions in revenue, MET still faces scheduled increases in unlocked supply.

The H1 report identifies 7,222,222 MET in scheduled monthly vesting, divided between 2.5 million for the team and roughly 4.72 million for the ecosystem reserve.

At a reference price of $0.33 per token, that monthly amount carries a notional value of roughly $2.38 million.

That is more than five times the latest 30-day holders-revenue figure.

The comparison does not mean unlocked tokens will necessarily be sold or that holders’ revenue must offset vesting dollar for dollar.

Team vesting occurs through Jupiter Lock, while ecosystem allocations can remain within project-controlled wallets.

Unlocking is not the same as transferring tokens to an exchange.

Still, the schedule matters.

Only about 56% of MET’s maximum one-billion-token supply was circulating according to CoinMarketCap’s November 8 snapshot.

The remaining supply creates a meaningful difference between MET’s circulating market cap and fully diluted valuation.

Future distributions could increase the amount of MET available for trading, depending on how recipients and reserve managers use their allocations.

Meanwhile, the project maintains significant discretion over incentive spending, fee parameters, and treasury operations.

The result is a token whose future economics depend on more than trading volume alone.

They also depend on decisions made by the organizations controlling the protocol.

So Is MET Actually a Hidden Gem?

Meteora has cleared several tests that many smaller crypto projects never pass.

Meteora operates a widely used product and generates substantial trading fees.

More importantly, the protocol has demonstrated an ability to increase its revenue share without immediately losing liquidity providers.

Its older pools show signs of resilience, and its infrastructure is beginning to support markets beyond speculative token launches.

Those are genuine strengths.

The valuation comparison with Raydium also deserves attention.

Even after excluding Meteora’s strongest revenue months, the protocol appears relatively inexpensive when measured against its underlying business activity.

But the token’s investment case remains less decisive.

The revenue discrepancy between Meteora’s own reporting and DefiLlama remains unresolved.

The protocol still relies heavily on volatile trading activity.

Fee distributions are conditional, buybacks are discretionary, treasury disclosures have become less detailed, and scheduled token unlocks continue.

Most importantly, MET holders do not own a contractual share of the business.

That leaves two plausible interpretations.

The bullish case is that Meteora has built a productive liquidity business whose token economics are still evolving. If the protocol sustains revenue, broadens its trading markets, and establishes stronger recurring demand for MET, today’s valuation could prove conservative.

The bearish case is that investors are discounting the token for entirely rational reasons. Protocol earnings do not automatically belong to holders, trading revenue can be cyclical, and additional supply may compete with future demand.

Ravel’s conclusion is that Meteora qualifies as a credible hidden-gem candidate based on its operating fundamentals, but MET’s undervaluation is not yet proven.

The business is real. The revenue is real enough to warrant serious attention, even if its precise historical measurement requires reconciliation.

What remains less certain is how much of that success will ultimately belong to the token.

And that may be the most revealing part of Meteora’s story.

The market could be overlooking one of Solana’s more productive liquidity businesses.

Or it could already understand the uncomfortable difference between a protocol that makes money and a token that captures it.

For MET, that difference is where the real valuation begins.

Ravel Methodology — November 8, 2026

Ravel compared Meteora and Raydium using CoinMarketCap market cap and DefiLlama’s latest available rolling 30-day protocol-revenue and holders-revenue figures. Annualized multiples use 30-day observations multiplied by 12 and are illustrative rather than forecasts.

The normalized Meteora revenue calculation uses DefiLlama’s February–August 2026 calendar-month figures, excluding January and September. The H1 revenue discrepancy compares Meteora’s Blockworks Research-based financial report with the sum of DefiLlama’s January–June observations, rounded to two decimal places in millions. Its cause has not been independently established.

Token unlocks are based on the project’s disclosed vesting schedule, not a wallet-by-wallet verification of subsequent distributions or sales. Buyback figures reflect the verified period disclosed in Meteora’s H1 report; Ravel has not completed an independent reconciliation of post-June buybacks.

This analysis is independent editorial research, not a financial audit or investment recommendation.