Meteora Dominates Onchain Volumes Despite Quarrels Over Airdrop Allocations

Meteora has proved its detractors wrong, leapfrogging rival exchanges to become Solana’s biggest DEX by trading volume. Naturally, Meteora’s newfound dominance has many network contributors questioning the authenticity of its surging volume.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Meteora’s DBC has been the biggest driver of growth, with dozens of launchpads leveraging the whitelabel bonding curve stack.

While Meteora’s growth and traction bode well for its upcoming TGE, controversy and infighting over who deserves a $MET allocation are overshadowing the DEX’s success.

Meteora Leads DEX and Bonding Curve Volumes

While network participants tore their hair out over pump.fun’s CCM meta and Prop AMM spreads, Meteora has quietly flipped all its peers to lead Solana DEX volumes. According to DefiLlama data, Meteora leads DEX trading volume across daily, weekly, and monthly time frames.

Remarkably, the bulk of Meteora’s trading volume is actually happening via the exchanges DBC, or Dynamic Bonding Curve. Popular among external token launchpads, like Jup Studio or Bags.app, the DBC is a whitelabel token creation stack through which tokens can be deployed to Meteora upon graduation.

In the past 24 hours alone, Meteora’s DBC volume accounts for 56% of the protocol’s total trading volume, far surpassing the DEX’s DLMM and DAMM products. 

Naturally, the outsized success of Meteora’s DBC has led many ecosystem participants to call its validity into question. While DefiLlama data reports that Meteora is the clear leader, representatives of rival exchanges suggest the platform’s high volumes are driven by wash trading.

Meanwhile, HumidFi, Solana’s leading Prop AMM, contends that DefiLlama is misreporting its data. According to Solscan data, HumidiFi executed over $1.4B worth of volume on September 18 alone, making it the onchain economy's greatest hive of trading activity.

LP Army Squabbles Over $MET Allocations

Despite Meteora’s growing prominence, the staunchest advocates are more concerned about who gets, and who doesn’t get, an airdrop allocation ahead of its eagerly awaited TGE. 

Meteora users expressed frustration after Jupiter COO/Cat Herder Kash Dhanda announced that $JUP stakers would receive a portion of the upcoming $MET airdrop. 

Beyond $JUP stakers, Meteora’s LP Army has also criticized the team’s decision to allocate a portion of the $MET airdrop to Mercurial investors. While Meteora seeks to honor former $MER holders, detractors argue that Mercurial investors have already benefited enough from concessions.

Meteora co-lead Soju has justified the $JUP staker allocation by employing $MET’s novel TGE mechanism. A creative first, the $MET airdrop will be distributed as an LP position, forcing $JUP stakers to interact and learn about the product while claiming their tokens. The Meteora team is optimistic that this measure will help expand the platform’s user base.

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