Crypto Market Making for token projects

The work is measured in three numbers: depth, meaning how much resting liquidity sits within 1% and 2% of the mid price on each side; spread, meaning the gap between the best bid and the best ask; and uptime, meaning the share of the day those orders were actually there.

Exchanges monitor the same three numbers after a listing, which is why they are the ones we quote to.

The full mechanics are in our guide to how crypto Market Making works.

That is the desk's fee. The project also funds the liquidity that sits in the book, and the size of that inventory is decided per venue before launch.

Payment is usually 100% in stablecoins or a 50/50 mix of the project's token and stablecoins. The full breakdown, including what moves the number up or down, is in how much a crypto Market Maker costs.

The token loan model is common in the industry: the desk borrows 0.5% to 2% of supply for 12 to 24 months and holds an option to buy those tokens later at a preset price. It ties part of the desk's compensation to where the price goes rather than to how orderly the book is. Founders should understand it before signing anything, which is why we explain it in retainer versus token loan.

The first two are understanding the tokenomics, the unlock schedule and which venues the token will trade on. The next two are infrastructure: accounts, API access on every exchange in scope, and the launch-day plan agreed with your team. The last stretch is testing and the go-live checklist.

Projects that arrive two weeks before an announced listing date get a book that was configured in a hurry, and hurried books show it on day one. The pre-launch sequence is in the token launch checklist.

EchoTrade is an official Liquidity Partner of MEXC and quotes across the tier-1 venues, including Binance, Bybit, OKX, KuCoin and Gate.io, along with the mid-tier exchanges where most tokens list first.

Each exchange publishes its own market-quality thresholds. MEXC, for example, sets a 2% spread ceiling and depth floors of $3,000 within 2%, $5,000 within 5% and $10,000 within 10% on either side, in its published monitoring criteria. What each venue expects at listing is covered in what exchanges require at listing.

We quote depth, spread and uptime, and those are the metrics exchange surveillance teams check. A token flagged for a compliance warning typically has around three days to bring depth and spread back into range before delisting proceedings begin, so the book has to be inside the thresholds every day, not on average.

The reasons tokens get flagged, and what to do in the window, are in why tokens get delisted.