What Is Metaplex (MPLX)? Solana Token Standard Revenue Down 91%

Metaplex (MPLX) is the set of Solana programs its foundation says creates nearly every token and NFT on the chain, and its protocol revenue fell 91.3% in a year. DefiLlama records $2,596,439 in August 2025 and $225,373 in August 2026. Half of that revenue buys MPLX, the protocol's token, for the Metaplex DAO.

The token went the other way. MPLX closed 22 September 2026 at $0.055183 on CoinGecko, up 72.2% from the 15 September close. That close was the highest of the 120 daily closes CoinGecko returned from 26 May. On the other side, April 2026 gave the buyback its weakest month of revenue since October 2023.

How Metaplex Works on Solana

A Solana token starts life as a bare mint account with a balance and a number of decimals. Metaplex's Token Metadata program attaches the name, symbol and image that wallets display, and it's the step most tokens on the Solana blockchain pass through at creation.

The rest of the stack covers NFTs and launches. Core is the newer NFT standard, built around a plugin system, and Bubblegum v2 mints compressed NFTs at a fraction of the cost of regular ones. Core Candy Machine runs NFT drops on Core, and Genesis launches tokens on-chain. The Metaplex developer docs mark the original Candy Machine and Auction House as deprecated. They've also added an Agent Registry for AI agents that hold their own on-chain identity.

Marketplaces read those standards to show what a wallet owns. Our guide to Solible, an early Solana NFT marketplace, covers the older Metaplex storefront product that let NFT owners run branded shops. Magic Eden added support for the newer Metaplex standards in the first half of 2025, the foundation's recap says.

Metaplex was founded in 2021, and in Metaplex crypto terms the protocol is the infrastructure while MPLX is the token that rides on its fees.

Where Metaplex Revenue Comes From

Metaplex earns a protocol fee on almost every new token and NFT created with its standards. That makes its income a meter on Solana issuance, and the recap names memecoin launchpads first among the apps that feed it.

Every one of the 11.7 million tokens that the Pump.fun launchpad had launched by July 2025 was created with Metaplex, the recap says. Raydium's LaunchLab and Jupiter's Jup Studio used Metaplex the same way when that recap went out.

In the first half of 2025 that model produced $13.7 million in revenue from 115 million new digital assets, with weekly revenue averaging about $522,000. DefiLlama's daily series adds up to $13,780,227 for the same six months, so the foundation's figure and the independent tracker agree. For calendar 2025 as a whole, DefiLlama counts $24,746,331.

Apps that build on the same issuance rails include Meteora, which runs Solana liquidity pools and which the recap names among the platforms using Metaplex standards to create new tokens.

How Does the MPLX Buyback Work?

MPLX has a maximum and total supply of 1,000,000,000 on CoinGecko, of which 471,408,495 count as circulating. The recap says no future token unlocks remain.

The MPLX buyback takes half of protocol revenue and uses it to buy MPLX for the Metaplex DAO, a split DefiLlama's methodology dates to June 2023. The DAO bought back 38.5 million MPLX between January and June 2025, equal to 3.9% of supply. Since the programme began, the recap says, the DAO has bought back 73.8 million MPLX on top of an initial allocation of 160 million. Those parts sum to 233.8 million, yet the recap put the DAO's holdings at 231 million MPLX on 6 July 2025 and named it the largest holder. The recap presented the buyback as a flywheel where more revenue means more tokens for the treasury.

The flywheel runs on the same meter as everything else. Half of August 2026's revenue is $112,687. At the 22 September close of $0.055183, that sum buys about 2.04 million MPLX, roughly 0.2% of supply in a month. Half of August 2025's revenue was $1,298,220, or 11.5 times the buying power at any given price.

How Far Has Metaplex Revenue Fallen?

DefiLlama's monthly revenue for Metaplex was $2,596,439 in August 2025, its highest month since January 2025's $4,350,344, and fell to $477,934 by December 2025. From March to August 2026 it stayed under $300,000 every month, and April 2026 brought in $167,031, the weakest month since October 2023. August 2026 closed at $225,373, down 91.3% on August 2025.

The fee line counts new assets, so it moves with the apps that mint them. Pump.fun and Jup Studio both follow the model laid out in how a crypto launchpad works.

The price line went the opposite way in the week to 22 September. On CoinGecko, circulating supply times the 22 September close gives a market value of $26.01 million, against $15.10 million at the 15 September close. That's $10.91 million of added value in seven daily bars. August 2026's revenue ran at about $2.70 million a year, which puts the token at 9.6 times annual revenue. The revenue data offers no reason for that move, and this page doesn't claim one.

Method: monthly figures sum DefiLlama's daily revenue series for Metaplex, read on 23 September 2026. The 30 days to 22 September total $193,288. That window mixes one $60,573 day on 27 August with seven September days under $400, so this page annualises August.

The two price feeds also disagree on size. CoinPaprika's market-cap figures imply about 756 million MPLX in circulation, 60% more than CoinGecko's 471,408,495, so name the feed before you quote a market value for this token. CoinPaprika was still revising its point for the 22 September close through 23 September as the next day traded, so this page takes the week's move from CoinGecko.

Who Can Mint More MPLX Tokens?

The canonical MPLX mint on Solana is METAewgxyPbgwsseH8T16a39CQ5VyVxZi9zXiDPY18m. CoinGecko also lists an MPLX address on BNB Smart Chain that isn't the Solana mint, and CoinPaprika carries a separate "MetaPlex (MPX)" entry that is a different asset.

Method: we read the mint account over Solana's public RPC at slot 449,745,267, about 15:34 UTC on 23 September 2026. The Solana Explorer page for the MPLX mint shows the same supply and mint authority.

Freeze authority is empty, so no key can freeze a holder's MPLX. Mint authority is still set. It points to an account with no private key that signs through an on-chain governance program, so new MPLX can only appear through that program's executed proposals. On-chain supply read 999,981,381.14 tokens at that slot. That's a little under the one billion CoinGecko shows.

If you hold MPLX, that mint authority is the specific supply risk to watch. The recap's "no future token unlocks" covers vesting, and it says nothing about a governance vote to mint more.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much revenue has Metaplex made in total?

The foundation's recap put lifetime revenue above $36 million from over 900 million assets created as of 6 July 2025. DefiLlama's all-time total read $49,426,380 on 23 September 2026.

What is MPLX's all-time low?

CoinGecko records $0.01768676 on 25 June 2026. The 22 September close was 3.1 times that level.

What is Metaplex Genesis?

The recap called Genesis a product suite for Onchain Token Offerings, and the docs describe it as the tool for fair-launching tokens on Solana. It puts Metaplex in the token-sale business as well as the minting one.

Can you trade MPLX on Phemex?

MPLX has never been listed on Phemex, so it has no perpetual there, and every price in this page comes from CoinGecko.

Bottom Line

MPLX trades as a claim on Solana's token-creation fees, and in August 2026 those fees ran below a tenth of their August 2025 level. The week to 22 September added $10.91 million of market value, which is about 97 months of buybacks at August 2026's pace. A buyback that size can't account for the move, and nothing in the revenue data says the meter has turned. If you trade the rally, you're trading attention on a protocol whose own income hasn't followed.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.