Bespoke market-making programs for token issuers. Continuous quoting across CeFi and DeFi from day one.
Most token market-making deals are structured around a token loan from the issuer. The market maker borrows tokens, provides liquidity, and compensation is hidden inside the terms of the loan and optional call. The economics are opaque, and the alignment is questionable.
Raven builds deals differently. Economics are transparent and negotiated openly. Depth, spread, and uptime targets are specified. Compensation reflects the actual market-making service, not the optionality of a borrowed-token position.
The result: an issuer knows exactly what they are paying for, what they are getting, and what the performance metrics will be — before the program starts and every day after.
Coverage spans the full token lifecycle, not just the first week after listing.
Pre-listing
Preparation
Venue selection, listing sequencing, inventory planning, infrastructure integration. The work that determines whether day one goes cleanly (done by the token project team).
Listing day
TGE & early trading
Continuous two-sided quoting from the moment secondary markets open. Price discovery under live conditions, with inventory and risk engines tuned for the volatility of a fresh listing.
Ongoing
Post-launch operation
Multi-venue coverage within agreed depth and spread parameters. Active inventory rebalancing. Regular reporting on Raven's trading activity and the resulting market conditions.
What a partnership with Raven actually looks like
01
We built Raven as an HFT firm first and a market maker second. That order matters. The result is tighter spreads, and quotes that stay live when slower shops widen or pull.
02
When volatility spikes, most market makers step back from the book entirely. We don't. Staying present when liquidity thins out is when counterparties feel the difference most.
03
We run a limited number of active engagements at any one time. It's a deliberate choice. Quality degrade quickly when overextending, and the counterparties we partner with feel the difference when we don't.
01
A market maker provides liquidity in a token by continuously placing buy and sell orders on exchanges, trading on its own account. In practice, this means resting orders on both sides of the order book at all times, so traders who want to buy or sell find a counterparty available at a competitive price. This activity narrows the bid-ask spread (the gap between the best buy and best sell price), which reduces the cost of trading for every participant. It also deepens the order book, meaning more capital is available at each price level, so larger trades can execute without significant slippage. Market makers operate algorithmically, running systems that monitor prices across multiple exchanges 24/7 and adjust their quotes in real time as market conditions change. The result, as a by-product of the market maker's own trading, is that the token's secondary market becomes more liquid and more orderly to the benefit of every participant trading and holding it.
02
Discussions typically begin well before a token generation event (TGE), often a few months in advance. There are practical reasons for this. Centralized exchanges generally expect a credible proprietary market maker to be active on the venue from listing day, and many will ask the project to confirm that arrangements are in place before approving the listing. Documenting the commercial terms also takes time, terms that frame the market maker's independent trading rather than direct it, since the trading firm deploys its own capital and retains discretion over how to do so. And the market maker needs lead time to integrate with the relevant exchanges, set up API connections, and calibrate its systems to the token's expected trading characteristics. Projects that begin these discussions early tend to see materially better launch-period market conditions than those that compress the process into the final weeks before TGE.
03
A token generation event is the point where a token first becomes tradeable on secondary markets. At that moment, there are no existing order books, no reference price beyond the launch valuation, and often a concentrated pool of early holders looking to sell into whatever liquidity exists. A proprietary market maker trading through the TGE window posts two-sided quotes from the first minute of trading and trades against the available flow on its own account, managing its own inventory and risk in real time as positions accumulate. The trading firm continues to quote through the volatility of the opening period rather than stepping back from the book. Market-wide, the effect is that early price discovery happens against a continuously quoted book rather than against the first few aggressive orders that hit an empty one.
04
Launch-period trading sets the reference point for how a token is perceived in the market. Erratic price action, wide spreads, and shallow books in the first weeks create a market-data record that's hard to reverse: listings teams at other exchanges look at it, traders look at it, and a market's early character takes months to shift. The character of launch-period trading also shapes what's possible afterwards. Additional exchange listings, lending market integrations, derivatives venues, and index inclusions all look at liquidity quality and trading behavior on existing venues when making their own decisions. Markets that trade well early leave those doors open. Markets that trade poorly early close them.
05
With a direct conversation through the contact form. We want to understand the project, the launch timeline, the venues in scope, and what the team is trying to achieve in the first weeks and months of trading. From there we work through commercial terms and the technical setup ahead of launch. We don't take every deal. When we do, it's because we've looked at the project, modeled the risk, and have conviction the partnership works for both sides. Teams planning a TGE can reach out directly through the contact form.
Raven runs a small number of active issuer mandates at any one time. If you're building a token project that needs propper execution, transparent terms, and coverage across the venues your community actually uses, the conversation is the fastest way to see whether there's a fit.
Let's connect →