Part of the project’s long-planned post-FTX comeback, the token will have 20% of its circulating supply allocated to former Mercurial stakeholders.
Meteora, a decentralized liquidity protocol, has unveiled tokenomics for its upcoming token, MET. The MET token generation event (TGE), scheduled for Oct. 23, is part of the team’s broader “Phoenix Rising Plan,” marking what it describes as a clean start after its rebrand from Mercurial, a long-planned move made to distance itself from the collapse of FTX.
In a blog post on Tuesday, Oct. 7, the Meteora team unveiled its so-called “Liquidity Generation Event,” which turns all early supporters and partners into liquid holders of the platform’s token. In the disclosed tokenomics, the team noted that there are no vesting periods or gradual unlocks for holders, meaning all circulating tokens will be liquid at launch.
Almost half of MET’s total supply, around 48%, will be circulating at launch. Out of that, about 20% will go to holders of the old Mercurial token (MER), 15% will go to Meteora users through a liquidity incentive program, and smaller shares of 3% each will be set aside for Jupiter stakers, launchpads, and market makers, along with 2% for off-chain contributors and another 2% for the M3M3 community.
The remaining 52% of tokens will be non-circulating, with 34% kept in the Meteora ecosystem reserve and 18% allocated to the team, with both allocations vested over six years.
No Token Sale at Launch
Meteora is also introducing the Liquidity Distributor, which it describes as a “new way to distribute airdrops.” As the team explained, around 10% of the circulating supply will be distributed as liquidity positions instead of standard airdrops, letting holders earn trading fees while providing liquidity.
The team stressed that there’s no company equity behind Meteora, only the MET token, adding that it won’t sell any of its own tokens during the launch.
Mercurial to Meteora
Initially, Meteora launched in 2021 as Mercurial Finance and ran an initial exchange offering to launch its MER token on now defunct crypto exchange FTX, which left “vast amounts of MER involved in FTX,” according to the Meteora team. Soon after FTX’s collapse, in December 2022, Meteora announced it was planning a new token and a rebrand in a clear effort to distance itself from the exchange.
In February 2023, a snapshot of all MER holdings was taken to determine the allocation of future MET tokens. The distribution plan aimed to return value to MER stakeholders, with 20% of the entire MET supply allocated to them. However, to reduce investor control and increase community involvement, earlier insider allocations were cut in half.
In February of this year, Meteora was hit by insider trading claims after the LIBRA token soared and then crashed in a high-profile pump and dump involving Argentina’s president Javier Milei, leading to CEO Ben Chow resigning.
