Can You Pay a Market Maker After the Listing?

Market making is normally billed as a monthly retainer paid in advance, starting at onboarding rather than at listing, which in practice is four to six weeks before your token trades. Paying after the listing is uncommon, because the work being paid for happens before it. The usual alternative is a token loan rather than a deferred invoice.

Almost every founder asks some version of this question, usually near the end of the call. The useful part of the answer is why the timing works this way, and what a desk hears when the question comes up.

Worth stating up front: [EchoTrade] works on the retainer model only. What follows describes the alternatives fairly, but we do not offer them.

Why do market makers charge before the listing?

The intuition behind "pay after listing" is that the service starts when trading starts. It starts several weeks earlier.

By the time your token opens for trading, a desk has already integrated with every venue in scope, positioned inventory across those venues, configured quoting parameters for the pair, tested connectivity, and coordinated the launch sequence with your team. Across the 90+ venues we quote on, that preparation runs four to six weeks, and all of it happens before a single order is placed. Our guide to [crypto market making] covers what the day-to-day work involves once the book is live.

So a request to pay after listing is, from the desk's side, a request to fund the most labour-intensive phase of the engagement for free and be paid only once the easier part begins.

There is a related point that matters more than the billing question. Engaging a desk late compresses that preparation, and compressed preparation is the most reliable predictor of a difficult launch day. In the launches we work on, a project that delays engagement to manage cash flow usually pays for it in the first week of trading instead, which is more expensive and less recoverable.

What are you actually asking when you ask this?

When founders ask about paying after the listing, they are usually asking one of three quite different things. Worth knowing which one you are asking, because they have different answers.

"We have no cash at all right now." The most common version, and a real constraint rather than a negotiating position. The honest answer is that the retainer model may not be available to you yet, and the alternatives are covered below.

"We have cash but it is committed until after TGE." A timing problem rather than a funding problem, and often solvable. Staged payments, a shorter initial term or a smaller opening venue list are all normal conversations.

"We want to see it work before we commit." Reasonable instinct, wrong mechanism. What you actually want is defined metrics and reporting you can hold the desk to. Agreed depth, spread and uptime targets per venue, reported on a fixed schedule, give you far more protection than an unpaid invoice does.

What payment structures do market makers offer?

Four, broadly.

Monthly retainer paid in advance. The standard. A fixed fee for a defined scope, billed monthly, starting at onboarding. Predictable for both sides and the easiest to compare between desks. Actual ranges are in [how much a crypto market maker costs].

Staged or quarterly payments. A variation rather than a different model. Some desks will structure the first payment around a project's funding timeline, particularly where a raise is closing on a known date. Ask, but ask early, since this is easier to arrange during negotiation than after a term sheet exists.

Token loan. The genuine answer to "we have no cash". The desk borrows 0.5% to 2% of supply, provides liquidity with its own capital, and instead of a fee holds a [call option] to keep those tokens at a preset strike price when the term ends, typically after 12 to 24 months. There is no invoice, which is why it is accessible. The cost arrives at expiry and scales with how well your token performs, which is why it needs modelling before signature. Full comparison in [retainer vs token loan].

Hybrid. Part fee, part tokens. Less common, and the terms vary enough that the only useful advice is to price both components separately and add them up.

Why is genuine deferred payment rare?

It is arithmetic rather than gatekeeping.

A desk providing liquidity commits capital, infrastructure and trader time from the moment of onboarding. Those costs are incurred whether or not the token launches, and launches slip regularly. A desk carrying unpaid engagements is financing other companies' launch delays, which is not a business anyone runs deliberately.

There is also a selection effect worth being honest about. Deferred payment is most attractive to the projects least able to sustain an engagement, and a desk that accepts it broadly ends up with a client base that struggles to renew. Desks operating since before the last cycle have generally learned this, which is why the ones most willing to defer are often the ones with the least experience.

What if you cannot afford a market maker yet?

Three real options, in order of how well they usually work.

Reduce the scope rather than the payment. Fewer venues, lower depth commitments, a shorter initial term. A properly supported book on two exchanges is worth more than a thin one on five, and this is the option founders consider least often despite it being the most sensible. Our piece on [how many exchanges to launch on] covers the arithmetic.

Take the loan model, with your eyes open. It exists precisely for this situation and it can be the right call. Model the option cost at three scenarios, token at half price, flat, and three times, get the strike and expiry in writing, and have someone independent read the agreement. What makes this go wrong is signing it while imagining a retainer.

Move the listing. Unpopular, and frequently correct. A launch that is underfunded on the liquidity side does not become adequately funded by starting sooner. If the budget is not there and the loan model is not acceptable, the honest options are to raise more, cut scope, or wait. The [token launch checklist] covers the full cost picture, and the item most often missed is that the budget needs to cover six months past TGE.

There is a hard floor underneath all three, and exchanges publish it. MEXC's [ST warning rules] flag a listed token whose average daily buy-sell spread exceeds 2% for 15 consecutive days, or which has fewer than 100 holders with more than $5 of it. A project that meets the warning criteria and does not correct them can be delisted three days later. Launching with no liquidity arrangement is not a saving, it is a deferred cost with a published timetable attached.

What if a desk agrees to unusual terms immediately?

A desk that agrees straight away to unusual payment terms without discussing scope is telling you something.

Either it is not covering its own costs on the engagement, which means the service will be thin, or the deferred component is being priced somewhere you have not looked yet. Neither is necessarily disqualifying, but both are worth a direct question. Payment terms sit alongside custody and reporting in the [questions worth asking before you sign], and the answers are more revealing together than separately.

FAQ

Can you pay a market maker after your token lists?

Rarely under a retainer, because the work being paid for happens before listing: venue integration, inventory positioning, quoting setup and launch coordination all take place in the weeks beforehand. Projects without cash before TGE more commonly use a token loan structure, where the desk is compensated through an option on borrowed tokens rather than through an invoice.

When do you start paying a market maker?

At onboarding, which for most engagements is four to six weeks before the exchange listing. Retainers are typically billed monthly in advance, so the first payment falls due at the start of the preparation period rather than when trading opens.

Do market makers offer payment plans?

Some will structure early payments around a project's funding timeline, particularly where a raise is closing on a known date. This is easier to arrange during negotiation than after terms are agreed, so raise it early. Genuine open-ended deferral is uncommon, because the desk's own costs begin at onboarding.

Is a token loan the same as paying later?

No. It removes the invoice but not the cost. The desk holds an option to keep the borrowed tokens at a preset strike price at expiry, so if the token appreciates the cost can exceed what a retainer would have been, sometimes substantially. It is deferred and variable rather than free.

What happens if we cannot afford a market maker at listing?

The workable options are to reduce scope rather than payment, meaning fewer venues at proper depth, or to use a loan structure with the terms modelled first, or to delay the listing until the budget exists. Listing with no liquidity arrangement is the option that looks cheapest and is not. Exchanges monitor spread and holder counts continuously, and MEXC's published rules allow delisting three days after a warning is applied.

How much of a token supply does a market maker borrow?

Typically 0.5% to 2% of total supply under a loan structure, held for a term of 12 to 24 months. The desk uses those tokens plus its own quote currency to provide liquidity, and its compensation comes from the option to retain them at the strike price when the term ends.

Planning a listing?

We handle the market structure side: order book depth, spreads and uptime across 90+ exchanges. [Message us on Telegram] before you submit the application, not after.