Pump.fun's PUMP rose about 18% in a week while Meteora's MET fell 14%, and Blockworks Research tied part of MET's discount to its discretionary buybacks.
Key Facts
Pump.fun's PUMP rose 17.6% over seven days to $0.00633 as of 12:35 p.m. ET Monday, while Meteora's MET fell 13.9% to $0.29.
Pump.fun currently allocates half its revenue to buying and burning PUMP. Its dashboard lists $474.8 million in cumulative buybacks, though Pump.fun says the figure does not yet correctly reflect custom-pair activity.
Meteora buys back MET at its own discretion, and Blockworks Research says making those buybacks programmatic could prompt the market to revalue the token.
Solana launchpad Pump.fun's token (PUMP) rose about 18% over the past week, while trading venue Meteora's token (MET) fell 14%. Meteora's own trading volume grew almost 50% in September.
The two tokens return different amounts of their platforms' revenue to holders. Pump.fun spends a fixed share of what it earns buying PUMP and destroying it, while Meteora's buybacks are discretionary. That difference may explain part of MET's discount to its rivals, Blockworks Research analyst Kunal Doshi wrote on Monday. Automatic buybacks are the step he says could change it.
Pump.fun states its policy plainly on its token page.
"Half of every dollar Pump.fun earns buys $PUMP on the open market, then burns it forever," the company says.
Why Did PUMP Outrun MET? Buybacks Return More to Holders
Pump.fun’s dashboard lists $474.8 million in cumulative buybacks and burns, equal to about 17% of total supply, though the company warns that the figures do not yet correctly reflect custom-pair activity.
A burn sends tokens to an address no one can spend from, which removes them from supply for good.
The buying is also tied to new activity. Agency, a launchpad for AI agent tokens, generated about $760,000 in fees on Saturday, and almost half went to PUMP, Doshi found. That flow "could explain the rally," he wrote.
Raydium (RAY) runs a smaller program. It sends 12% of trading fees to RAY buybacks and holds the tokens rather than burning them, its documentation states. RAY edged higher this week.
How Busy Was Solana in September? DEX Volume Rose 20%
Solana (SOL) decentralized exchanges handled $78.3 billion in trading in September, up 20% from August, DefiLlama data show.
"The long term activity trend is becoming hard to ignore," Blockworks Research's Sam Schubert wrote on X.
Meteora took a growing share of that trading. Its main product, DLMM, lets liquidity providers choose the price ranges where their funds trade. On Fomo, a fast-growing Solana trading app, Meteora handled more than twice Raydium's share of memecoin volume, Doshi found.
Is MET Cheap? Blockworks Says Its Volume Is Overlooked
MET's market value is about three times Meteora's annualized revenue on DefiLlama figures. PUMP trades at about five times and RAY at about six. Doshi puts Meteora's revenue higher, which would make MET cheaper still.
Meteora sends part of its DLMM revenue to MET staking rewards, Doshi wrote, and he called the criticism of its value accrual "overstated." Traders also rotated into DeFi tokens that share revenue last week.
What Would Close the Gap? Programmatic Buybacks From Meteora
Buybacks carry their own risk. Most programs are funded from treasuries rather than recurring revenue and spend more at market peaks, according to Keyrock research.
Meteora plans to share details of a new version of DLMM at Solana Summit Singapore on Tuesday, it said on X.
MET would need to rise about 50% to trade at PUMP's multiple of revenue, on DefiLlama figures.
"If value accrual is the concern, a single announcement making buybacks programmatic could be all it takes to spark a rerating," Doshi wrote.
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