Metaplex Thesis

Written By Ralph Pahlmeyer

Executive Summary

Metaplex is a leading infrastructure protocol on Solana and, in our view, offers the most compelling way to gain exposure to the Solana ecosystem. It holds a dominant position in token creation, powering over 90% of fungible tokens and more than 99% of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Metaplex earns a fee every time its standards or platform are used to issue a token.

While we’ve tracked Metaplex for several years, we refrained from investing due to two core concerns:

  1. Overreliance on Memecoins and NFTs: We believed memecoins and NFT speculation were unsustainable trends and viewed Metaplex’s growth as overly dependent on them.

  2. Unfavorable Token Distribution: A large portion of MPLX supply was held by short-term investors and distressed funds, including Alameda Ventures (FTX), which owned 7.3% of the total supply and needed to liquidate.

Our view has since shifted due to multiple fundamental changes:

  • Monopoly on token creation on Solana

    • Metaplex is the default infrastructure for token creation across Solana’s most prominent launchpads, including Pump.Fun, Bonk, Raydium, Jupiter, and Believe. Virtually all new token launches—over 99%—leverage Metaplex’ infrastructure.

  •  Healthy, Stabilized Minting Volumes

  • Attractive Entry Price Following Forced Selling

    • FTX sold its holdings OTC in two tranches at $0.275 and $0.22 in 2024 as well as 5.5 million tokens tokens on various exchanges.

    • Blockchain data confirms distressed selling from several funds at a loss.

    • Today, MPLX trades at ~$0.13—representing a 50%+ discount to those OTC rounds.

  • Strong Revenue Base and Valuation Dislocation

    • Metaplex currently generates $1.89M in monthly revenue (~$22.7M annualized).

    • The protocol trades at just 6x Revenue / Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV), a steep discount relative to infrastructure peers.

  • Launch of Genesis: A Next-Gen Token Platform

    • Launching in July 2025, Genesis addresses longstanding challenges in token launches—such as front-running, transparency, and trust.

    • Genesis introduces configurable presales, auctions, on-chain vesting, and liquidity tools—creating a new revenue vertical for Metaplex.

  • Significant Buyback Program

    • 50% of protocol revenue is allocated to MPLX token buybacks (~$875K/month).

    • In 2025, the protocol has been repurchasing over 0.64% of the total MPLX supply monthly.

Product Overview

Metaplex is the inventor of both the fungible and non-fungible token standard for the Solana ecosystem.  Although Metaplex has a number of products, their core revenue driver is fungible token creation via their Token Metadata standard.

PRODUCT BY CATEGORY

Metaplex earns a small fee (~0.0015-0.01 SOL) for each token issued with its standards. At a SOL price of ~$200 this equates to anywhere between $0.30-$2.00.

Genesis: A New Metaplex Product

Metaplex has created a new framework, called Genesis, for launching tokens on Solana which seeks to solve the transparency, front-running and trust issues that routinely plague token launches.  Key features include:

  • Configurable Launch Mechanics: Fixed price presales, time-based auctions, and launch pools.

  • Transparency: Fully on-chain vesting and tokenomics.

  • Claim/Airdrop Tools: Integrated airdrops to wallets or NFT holders.

  • Liquidity Tools: Direct integration with DEXs to ensure post-launch price stability.

  • Configurable Fair Launch Mechanics: Broad range of flexible launch mechanisms for tokens and token extensions including fixed price presales, launch pools and auctions.

  • Time-based launch pools and auctions eliminate front-running and sniping.

  • Transparent Token Economics & Vesting: Visible and verifiable on-chain distributions and token economics, making sure all participants have equal access to information.

  • Airdrop & Claim Mechanisms: Ability to distribute tokens to buyers and NFT owners through on-chain airdrops and claims, synchronized with launch mechanics and liquidity migration.

  • Liquidity Management: Ability to allocate sale proceeds to on-chain liquidity with leading DEXs, ensuring stable and fair market conditions post-launch.

CURRENT PRODUCT LINE BY VOLUME

Metaplex volumes have been increasing precipitously since 2024 with token minting volumes stabling at well over 1M mints per month.

CURRENT PRODUCT LINE BY % REVENUE

NFT Revenue has been replaced by Fungible Token Revenue

Revenue from Metaplex NFT creation has gone from making up more than 92% of its total revenue as of Q1 2024, to less than 8% as of Q2 2025.  This large swing in revenue has been driven by the demand for NFTs drying up.  The major revenue driver for Metaplex is now minting of fungible tokens which is now accounting for over 92% of Metaplex revenue today.  The success of various “token launchpad” platforms like Pump.fun and Bonk.fun has been incredible to witness and has become one of the crypto industry’s most successful categories of product-market fit.  Solana continues to be one of the best ecosystems to launch a token which should create a tailwind for Metaplex.

Market Share and Traction

Metaplex has a monopoly providing easy infrastructure to launch tokens on Solana with 99% marketshare. Metaplex’s largest customers are token launchpads: Pump.Fun, Bonk, Raydium, Jupiter, Believe and others.

Since Q3, 2024, Metaplex has been consistently launching an average of over 1M tokens per month. 

As of the last few months, Metaplex revenues have settled in at around $1.89M in monthly revenue, i.e. $22.7M annually. 

Metaplex continued to see strong engagement with an average of over 500k unique wallets signing transactions in 2025, bringing the total number of unique singers since launch to over 11 million.

Revenue Model

Metaplex charges a fee per token minted or per token ticker created. 50% of fees earned by the protocol go towards token buybacks.  Here is the Metaplex fee breakdown schedule:

Monthly fees generated by Metaplex have been ticking up since stabilizing after all time highs during the peak of memecoin mania in January 2025.

Metaplex’s new Genesis product line

Genesis is a fully configurable token launch platform based on the issuer's preferred sale mechanics. Fees are structured as a % of total sale proceeds thus aligning incentives with each customer.  We expect Genesis to add a minimum of $12M in revenue each year to Metaplex’s bottom line.

Token Distribution and Valuation

Tokenomics

  • Total Supply: 1B MPLX

  • Current Price: $0.13

  • Current FDV: $130M

  • Annual Revenue Run-Rate: $22.7M

  • Revenue Multiple: ~6x

Monthly Recurring Buybacks

0.64% of supply is repurchased monthly by the protocol ($875K).

  • FTX originally held 7.26% of supply (72.6M MPLX); 90%+ has been sold.

  • 4.5M tokens remain with FTX

The Forced Selling is Now Behind Us

We believe the worst of the forced selling is behind us. As token ownership shifts to long-term believers and liquidity expands, the valuation should normalize closer to infrastructure peers (10–15x revenue).

Metaplex has instituted a token buyback program with 50% of all fees collected by the platform, resulting in on average over 0.64% of the supply being bought back by the DAO each month.  Despite the aforementioned solid revenues and token buyback program, Metaplex has been trading at an abnormally low valuation of just ~6x revenue to fully diluted valuation (FDV).  We would expect platforms with Metaplex’s market share and growth potential to trade at a minimum of a 15x revenue multiple.  We believe Metaplex’s lagging performance to be the result of poor token distribution.

FTX was a major investor in Metaplex and has been a forced seller as the estate is liquidated.  Additionally, we have tracked other funds that have also accounted for much of the token sell pressure. We remain optimistic that this is now changing as over 90% of the FTX supply has now been sold and other funds we’ve been tracking are now out of tokens.

7.26% of the supply was owned by FTX, i.e. 72.6M tokens

Risks & Mitigants

Solana ecosystem dependency

  • Token creation use cases are still early and emergent

    • Most of the tokens created via Metaplex over the last 12 month period relate to speculative meme coins. We are seeing a lot of experimentation across different asset classes and with Metaplex’s new Genesis product line, we expect token creation use cases to evolve from speculative meme coins to tokenized assets from the traditional financial world like private equity, venture capital, equities, various debt instruments, and other traditional assets.

Conclusion

Metaplex has emerged from the meme coin frenzy with a resilient revenue base (north of $22.7M annualized) and dominant market position. Forced selling has created a rare entry point—trading at just 6x revenue with accelerating token buybacks and new product catalysts.  We believe the market is mispricing Metaplex due to a legacy token overhang. That overhang has now cleared while liquidity expands via a new exchange listing on Coinbase and a future listing on Binance (Metaplex was recently listed on Binance Alpha). The Metaplex token is well-positioned for a rerating.

In the near term, the Solana-based token launchpad wars are heating up with Pump.fun launching an incentive campaign and LetsBonk.fun and others also pushing incentives to launch tokens on their respective platforms.

We are buyers of Metaplex at these current levels.

Ralph Pahlmeyer
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