Meteora Under Fire For Ties to Kelsier Pump-and-Dumps

Meteora, a popular Solana DEX, is under fierce scrutiny for its continued support of Hayden Davis’s prolific pump-and-dump launches.

Distancing themselves from Meteora in the wake of the $LIBRA scandal, liquidity providers are rapidly withdrawing funds from the platform. 

Why are Solana DeFi participants losing their faith in Meteora?

“Meteora in Damage Control Mode”

For all the damage it caused, the $LIBRA scandal exposed some concerning trends in Solana DeFi. While many onchain analysts have theorized that a single player is behind a series of large-scale pump-and-dump memecoins, this extractive figure finally has a face.

Kelsier Ventures CEO Hayden Davis has been revealed as the man behind the curtain. Following the $LIBRA scandal, Davis freely admitted in an interview with Coffeezilla that his team launched and sniped millions of dollars worth of $MELANIA tokens. Davis has now also been linked to other extractive memecoin launches, like $TRUST and $HOOD.

Notably, Davis also managed the launch of $M3M3, a memecoin that was officially acquired by Meteora after it was deployed through Meteora’s launchpad. 

Stealth launched back in 2024, the $M3M3 TGE (Token Generation Event) was plagued by suspicious activity, snipers, and account freezing manipulation.

In an official statement, Meteora co-founder Ben Chow revealed that he had referred his “friend” Hayden Davis to several memecoin project leads over the past few months. 

Following the revelations, members and moderators of the Meteora community have expressed feelings of betrayal and incredulity, disappointed at the project’s continued endorsements and support of Davis and Kelsier’s serial pump-and-dump launches. 

Despite the allegations, Meteora co-founder Ben Chow has assured the Solana community that the Meteora team had “no involvement in the project at all beyond providing IT support… Neither I nor the Meteora team compromised the $LIBRA launch by leaking information, nor did we purchase, receive, or manage any tokens.”

Meteora TVL Down 12%

As trust in the Meteora protocol wanes, liquidity providers are removing their funds from the platform.

According to DefiLlama and Meteora data, TVL on the decentralized exchange has dropped from $1.195B on Feb 16 to currently hold $1.05B, representing a 12.13% decline in deposited funds.

Meanwhile, Meteora’s official memecoin deployed under Hayden Davis’ oversight, $M3M3, has plummeted over 50% since the $LIBRA launch, sliding from $0.046 to currently trade hands at $0.021 based on Dexscreener data.

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