The order book
An exchange keeps a list of everyone willing to buy your token and everyone willing to sell, at the prices they will accept. The highest buy order and the lowest sell order are the top of the book. The gap between them is the spread. The money resting near the price is the depth.
When a book is thin, a small trade eats through several price levels at once. That is why a $500 sell can drop a chart by several percent: there was nothing underneath. The price did not "fall" for any reason a holder would recognise. The book was simply empty.
What a market maker does
A market maker keeps its own buy and sell orders resting on both sides, in layers, and moves them as the price moves. Buyers and sellers who arrive at different moments both find someone to trade with, so trades happen at sensible prices instead of wherever the last stray order sat.
It earns the spread: buying slightly below the middle, selling slightly above. It loses when the price moves against the inventory it is holding, which is why a market maker's own trading result is a small number either way, and never the point of the exercise.
The five things worth measuring
| Measure | The plain version |
|---|---|
| Two-sided uptime | How much of the time someone can both buy and sell, because a real order sits on each side |
| Spread | The gap between the best buy and sell price. Smaller means cheaper to trade |
| Depth within ±1% / ±2% | How much can be traded without moving the price more than that, on the weaker side |
| Time at the best price | How often the market maker holds the top of the book rather than queueing behind others |
| Quote quality (markouts) | Where the price went 1, 10 and 60 seconds after each trade. It shows whether faster traders are picking off stale quotes |
Volume is not on that list. Volume is an outcome of a book worth trading against, which is exactly why it can be faked while the others cannot.
Volume is not liquidity
Manufactured volume — the same party buying and selling to itself, known as wash trading — makes a chart look busy and changes nothing about whether a holder can actually sell. Exchanges run detection for it, and when they find it the project's pair is restricted or delisted. The desk that sold the service is not the one that pays.
How to tell a real desk from a volume seller
- It commits to numbers, in the contract, with a remedy if it misses them.
- It reports its trading result separately from your token's price move, so neither hides behind the other.
- It never holds your tokens: they stay in your own exchange account under a trade-only key.
- It says no to price guarantees and to volume targets, without being asked twice.
- It shows you something you can check yourself, any day, rather than a monthly figure.
That last point is the one most projects skip, and it is the one that tells you whether everything else is true.
Common questions
What is the difference between liquidity and volume?
Liquidity is whether someone can buy or sell right now without moving the price. Volume is how much changed hands. A token can show large volume and still be impossible to sell, which is what manufactured volume produces.
Does a market maker control the price of a token?
No. It keeps orders on both sides so trading is orderly. The price comes from what buyers and sellers do. Any desk promising a price level is promising something it cannot deliver.
Does a project need a market maker?
If a normal-sized trade moves your price sharply, if an exchange sets liquidity conditions you cannot meet, or if you are about to list, then usually yes. If your book is already deep and tight, probably not, and an honest desk will tell you so.
How much does it cost?
It depends on your pair, your exchange and the depth you need, so we quote each project after a liquidity check on its own market. Packages run from one month to six, covering one pair on one exchange, plus the inventory you fund in your own account.
Start with a liquidity check on your market.
Tell us the token and the exchange. We run our quotes against your live market without placing a single order, and come back with the targets we would commit to and the package that fits. No key, no funds, no obligation.