What is MET? Meteora's token: supply, unlocks, buybacks and staking

MET in one paragraph

MET is the token of the Meteora protocol. It launched on 23 October 2025 on Solana as a standard SPL token with 6 decimal places.^[1][2] Its issuer is Meteora Comet Limited, a company in the British Virgin Islands, which filed MET's white paper under the EU's MiCA rules.^[4]

How many MET exist

1,000,000,000 MET were created. The team burned (destroyed) 2,261,990 MET on 25 October 2025, and holders have burned a little more, so on 29 Sep 2026 the supply stood at 997,732,429 MET.^[1][2] The token's mint authority is switched off, so nobody can create more, and it has no freeze authority, so nobody can freeze your MET.^[2]

Who got MET at launch

48% of the supply was unlocked on day one. The rest, the team's 18% and the Meteora Reserve's 34%, unlocks over time.^[1]

Mercurial holders were holders of MER, the token of Meteora's predecessor, and the Mercurial Reserve is kept for MER holders affected by FTX's collapse.^[1][5] The LP Stimulus Plan is the pot that pays liquidity providers under Meteora's reward seasons.^[1] Meteora rewards explains them.

When the rest unlocks

The team's and the reserve's tokens have a one-month cliff, then unlock in 72 monthly steps, from 23 November 2025 to 23 October 2031.^[1] The balances match: on 29 Sep 2026 the reserve vault held 288,055,555.56 MET, which is 34% of the supply minus eleven monthly steps.^[5][6]

One thing to know: these vaults are ordinary wallets, as an explorer shows. The unlock schedule is a promise Meteora publishes, not something a program enforces.^[6]

Buybacks

Meteora has bought MET back using its treasury. The buyback wallet held 30,940,377 MET on 29 Sep 2026, and the investor-relations site puts the USDC spent at $13.67 million, a figure it last updated in January 2026.^[5][7] DefiLlama, which tracks the buybacks as “holders revenue”, shows none since 14 May 2026.^[8]

Staking MET

Meteora's staking program, called Referral Staking, pays stakers a share of 10% of DLMM protocol fees in USDC, based on how much they stake and for how long. The minimum is 200 MET and each cycle lasts a month. A normal unstake takes 7 days and gives up that cycle's pending rewards; leaving at once costs 10% of the MET you take out.^[3] On 29 Sep 2026, 102.5 million MET were staked by 3,458 wallets.^[9] How to stake MET walks through it.

What MET doesn't give you

The white paper says MET holders have no ownership, voting, governance or profit-sharing rights, and no right to dividends.^[4] Meteora's forum is a place for proposals and discussion; there is no token vote.^[10]

Where to check MET yourself

• The mint on Solscan: supply, authorities and holders.^[2]
• Jupiter lists MET as verified, with an Organic Score of 88.5 and 44,538 holders on 29 Sep 2026.^[11]
• Meteora's investor-relations site: buybacks, wallets and monthly reports.^[5]