A group of investors has filed a class-action lawsuit against decentralized cryptocurrency exchange Meteora, alleging the firm was involved in manipulating the launch and market price of the M3M3 token.

In an amended complaint filed on April 21 in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the plaintiffs allege that venture capital firm Kelsier Labs, Meteora, and four current or former executives “intentionally misrepresented” information in the M3M3 launch in December 2024.

The investors claimed that they suffered at least $69 million in losses between December 2024 and February 2025 after the parties presented “trusted leaders in the Solana ecosystem” as being behind the token launch, rather than a “blatant fraud” in which sales were manipulated to artificially inflate the price.

“This artificially-inflated valuation communicated highly misleading information to non-insider investors, who reasonably relied on Defendants’ representations that the $M3M3 launch was fully accessible to the public and conducted in a transparent manner fair to non-insider investors, and thus reasonably relied on $M3M3 market price as a meaningful measure of its value,” the complaint reads. “The post-launch price spike also served to corroborate Defendants’ aggressively-marketed, but misleading, assertions that $M3M3 had intrinsic value and a comparatively low risk profile.”

Class-action lawsuit against Meteora, Kelsier Labs, and current and former executives. Source: PACER

The lawsuit is one of many involving different crypto firms that have alleged fraud through violations of US securities laws. Though the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), under acting chair Mark Uyeda since US President Donald Trump took office, has scaled back or dismissed many enforcement actions involving digital assets, the agency said in February it still intended to pursue cases against fraudulent token projects.

The investors added:

“Together, Defendants designed the $M3M3 Token and planned its launch on Meteora in a manner intended to illicitly enrich themselves at the expense of the unsuspecting investing public.”

Related: Meteora says co-founder’s X account hacked after ‘parasitic’ memecoin post

Memecoins in the Solana ecosystem

Meteora has been tied to the launch of several high-profile yet controversial tokens, including those for Trump (TRUMP), his wife Melania (MELANIA), Libra (LIBRA), and online influencer Haliey Welch (HAWK).

According to the lawsuit, the firm “purported to offer a comprehensive solution to the problems in the memecoin investment market” with the launch of M3M3. The defendants in the case allegedly attempted to distinguish the token from other notable memecoins by highlighting the “legitimacy and trustworthiness” through the involvement of Meteora co-founder Ben Chow and the platform.

Kelsier Ventures, KIP Protocol, and Meteora face a similar class-action lawsuit filed in New York in March over LIBRA allegedly being launched in a “deceptive, manipulative and fundamentally unfair” manner. Argentine President Javier Milei briefly promoted the token over social media after his sister reportedly received payments from the project.

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Astra Fintech, a global blockchain payments provider, has launched a $100 million fund to support the Solana ecosystem’s growth throughout Asia, according to an April 21 announcement.

Through the fund, Astra Fintech plans to deploy capital to accelerate projects and form partnerships with developers, companies, and regulators. The fund’s base of operations will be in South Korea, a country Solana’s venture arm invested in after the collapse of the Terra ecosystem in 2022.

The fund will focus on projects and developers working on PayFi solutions — a conglomeration of systems that use blockchain technology to facilitate payments. Astra’s main suite of products attempts to blend traditional finance with digital currencies.

According to data from Electric Capital, Solana and Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) blockchains are currently within the top 10 blockchains for developer activity, only behind Ethereum.

In 2021, Solana created a $5 million development fund to spur projects in Southeast Asia. The region is a hotspot for Web3 games, a crypto use case that has proliferated on Solana due to the blockchain’s fast speeds and low transaction costs.

Solana, with its ups and downs

The Solana ecosystem has had quite the ride in 2025. Its native token, Solana (SOL), rose to an all-time high of $293.31 on Jan. 19, two days after US incoming President Donald Trump launched a memecoin on the network. It trades at $136.61 at this writing, a fall of 53.4% since then.

However, crypto executives and companies continue betting on the Solana ecosystem. On April 7, a group of former Kraken executives acquired Janover, aiming to transform the real estate firm into a de facto Solana treasury. Just weeks later, Upexi — a brand management and supply chain company — saw its shares surge 630% on April 21 after announcing a similar strategy. Meanwhile, Canada approved SOL staking in early April, and ARK Invest has since added exposure to Solana funds through its tech-focused ETFs.

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ARK Invest has added exposure to staked Solana (SOL) to the portfolios of two of its exchange-traded funds (ETFs), the asset manager said in a client email reviewed by Cointelegraph. 

As of April 21, the two ARK funds — ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW) and ARK Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF) — now hold shares of 3iQ’s Solana Staking ETF (SOLQ), a Canadian ETF holding staked SOL, ARK said. 

The two ARK funds are designed to offer broad exposure to emerging technologies, and comprise a mix a technology stocks — including crypto-focused companies such as Coinbase, Block, and Robinhood — and spot cryptocurrencies, according to ARK’s website.

According to ARK, adding the SOL ETF shares makes “ARKW and ARKF the first US-listed ETFs to gain exposure to Solana.”

In March, asset manager Volatility Shares launched two ETFs that offer exposure to SOL using financial derivatives, but spot Solana ETFs are still awaiting approval by US regulators.

ARKW’s fund holdings. Source: ARK Invest

Related: Spot Solana ETFs to launch in Canada this week

Solana ETFs’ proposals line up for approval

Experts say the recent listing of Solana futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), a US derivatives exchange, indicates that US SOL ETF listings are coming soon. 

Last week, 3iQ launched its Solana ETF in Canada following approval of several such funds by the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), Canada’s largest securities regulator. 

Solana is the second-most popular blockchain network after Ethereum. Its total value locked exceeds $7 billion, versus approximately $45 billion for the Ethereum network, according to data from DefiLlama. 

Blockchain networks by TVL. Source: DeFiLlama

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) authorized spot Ether ETFs to trade in the United States in July 2024. 

In July, ARK partnered with 21Shares, a crypto-focused fund issuer, to launch ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB), a spot Bitcoin (BTC) fund with nearly $4 billion in net assets as of April 21, according to ARK’s website

It also partnered with 21Shares on an Ether ETF but dissolved the partnership in June, shortly before the fund launched under 21Shares’ branding. 

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