Meteora's MET Referral Staking Cycle 1 Closes With 76M Tokens Staked and $336K in Rewards

Meteora MET$0.220+4.5% closed the first cycle of its Referral Staking program on August 21, with final figures showing 76 million MET tokens staked, an estimated $336,000 in rewards, and more than 9,000 referred users across the cycle. Meteora announced the close at 10:53 UTC, noting that distribution is still being finalized and rewards will be claimable manually once complete.

The program launched on July 20. Within its first four days it drew 65 million MET, with the final total growing by roughly 17% over the remaining weeks of the cycle. Participants who unstaked before the cycle closed forfeited their cycle rewards.

Cycle 2 is now active. Alongside the Cycle 1 close, Meteora launched a Referral Leaderboard tracking top referrers by code, total referred users, and fees generated by those users.

How the Referral Staking Program Pays Out

The program ties MET staking directly to Meteora's trading fee revenue rather than to token inflation. Per Meteora's referral program, staking MET gives holders a proportional share of a reward pool funded by 10% of DLMM protocol trading fees. Referrers who generate and share codes earn 8% of the protocol fees produced by the LPs they recruit. Referred LPs receive 2% of the fees from their own DLMM positions. All payouts come in USDC, with a cap of 0.1 USDC per staked MET per cycle.

This structure means the reward pool tracks Meteora's own fee output directly. Cycle 1's $336,000 in estimated rewards reflects DLMM activity across the five-week program period.

Solana Compass analytics show MET's holder base grew from 37,529 on the program's launch day to 38,281 within two days, then held above 38,200 through cycle close on August 21.

Protocol Revenue Behind the Cycle: $50M Over 12 Months

The fee-backed structure gives Meteora's protocol metrics direct relevance to what stakers earn. In an interview with MCG on August 20, Pranave, a Meteora team member, laid out a 12-month scorecard: approximately $100 billion in total volume, $555 million in total fees, and $50 million in protocol revenue. He told MCG that the second half of 2026 is projected to exceed $25 million in protocol revenue.

July data showed $3.9 billion in trading volume, with fees growing 25% month-over-month despite lower overall volume, a result Pranave attributed to Meteora's dynamic fee mechanics in its DLMM pools. Second-quarter LP pool revenue came in at $2.6 million, up from $1.9 million in the prior period.

Those numbers build on what Meteora disclosed at its August 13 community call, where the protocol reported $32 billion in H1 2026 trading volume and $140 million in LP fees. Tokenized equities are a growing share of that activity: Pranave told MCG that Sunrise alone has processed $2.9 billion in volume, $370 million of which came from tokenized equities.

Pump.fun is a substantial contributor to Meteora's fee base. Pranave told MCG that 50% of the protocol's fees come from Pump.fun tokens, and framed the relationship as symbiotic rather than competitive.

MET Buyback Program: $14M Spent, 37.37M Tokens Acquired

Alongside the staking program, Meteora has been buying back MET through a program funded from protocol revenue. According to Pranave's disclosures to MCG, approximately $14 million has been spent to date, acquiring around 37.37 million tokens, about 4% of total supply.

The buyback draws from the same revenue stream that funds Referral Staking rewards, so both mechanisms operate off fee income rather than new issuance. Pranave also noted that Meteora removed its publicly displayed treasury figures following a period of protocol hacks and exploits across the broader DeFi landscape.

On Soju's reduced role at the protocol, Pranave said that "absolutely nothing has changed" on the token-value strategy, characterizing the transition as a personnel change rather than a shift in direction.

Cycle 2 and Reward Claims

Reward distribution for Cycle 1 is in progress. Once finalized, participants can claim through the Meteora referral interface. The Referral Leaderboard is now live for Cycle 2, giving participants a running view of their referral activity and standings before the next cycle closes.